IN 



BY 

ROSE HENDERSON 





Class __JErA.^2_ 
Book— • H^'^ 
Gop}Tight]^° 

CQEmiGHT OBFOSm 




Multnomah Falls — Near Portland, Oregon. 



LITTLE JOURNEYS 
IN AMERICA 



BY 

Rose Henderson 



THE SOUTHERN PUBLISHING CO. 
DALLAS, TEXAS 






CoprHiGHT, 1922 

BY 

Rose Henderson 
All rights reserved 



DEC 21 22 

CU692514 



PREFACE 

"Little Journeys in America" is presented to 
the general reading public and to the school chil- 
dren of the United States, with a hope that it may 
serve to give a better knowledge and appreciation 
of the beauties and the worth-while places, insti- 
tutions, and natural resources of our country. 

To love our country more, to appreciate more 
its many wonders, beauties, and unlimited oppor- 
tunities for service, happiness and advancement is 
only to know more about the things that we may 
call our own. 

So, to "See America First" through the illus- 
trations of this book and through the excellent 
literary work of the author, so that we learn to 
love our own country the more and to maintain 
its principles and institutions and to oppose every 
form of attack that threatens to destroy the foun- 
dations of our Government is the service we hope 
to render in the publication of this book. 

The Publishers. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

THE PUBLISHERS desire to express especial apprecia- 
tion of the many excellent photographs used in illustrating 
this book, furnished by the Chambers of Commerce of the 
following cities: 

Boston, Massachusetts 

Colorado Springs, Colorado 

Minneapolis, Minnesota 

New Orleans, Louisiana 

Portland, Oregon 

Richmond, Virginia 

Savannah, Georgia 

St. Louis, Missouri 

Seattle, Washington. 



CONTENTS 



New England 

Boston, the Puritan City .... 

The Atlantic Slope 

New York, the City of Towers . 
Washington, the National Capital . 
Pittsburgh, the World's Workshop . 
Baltimore, the Monumental City 
Philadelphia, the Birthplace of Liberty 

The Western Reserve 

Cleveland, the Forest City. 

The South 

New Orleans, the Old French City . 

The Middle West 

Chicago, the City of the Lake and Prairies 

The Twin Cities 

Detroit, the Automobile City . 
Saint Louis, the Great River City . 
The Rocky Mountain Highlands 
The Great Southwest . . 

The Pacific Slope 

San Francisco, the City of the Golden Gate 
Los Angeles, a City of Flowers and Sunshine . 

Alaska 

Porto Rico 

Pronouncing Vocabulary .... 



1 

10 

23 

34 

50 

62 

71 

80 

91 

101 

110 

123 

134 

146 

155 

167 

178 

183 

195 

206 

221 

230 

237 

248 

259 



NEW ENGLAND 

TF YOU are traveling about to see America first, 
it seems natural to start with New England, 
the home of so many of our great-great-great grand- 
fathers and grandmothers. Here, too, lived the 
earliest American story-writers. Here the first 
meeting-houses were built and the first witches 
burned. You have already learned many inter- 
esting and exciting things about New England, and 
you will enjoy seeing it for yourself. 

From the pine-covered mountains and birch- 
bordered lakes of Maine to the "Old Stone Mill" 
and the fashionable cottages of Newport, Rhode 
Island, you will find a great variety of scene. 
Brown cliffs, with the ocean's spray beating against 
them; rocky islands and inlets; gray sand dunes 
and marshes are all along the coast. 

In Vermont and New Hampshire you discover 
quaint villages tucked along the green valleys, or 
perched high in wooded ravines. Lonely little 
farms are abandoned by their discouraged owners ; 
the weather-beaten farmhouses are left to birds and 
mice; and the gardens are covered with weeds and 
wild vines. But there are other homes, cozy and 
comfortable, among the trees and hills. Down the 
Connecticut river the farms are larger. Fields of 



2 Little Journeys in America 

grain and tobacco and grassy, flower-strewn 
meadows surround the brown farmhouses. 

Even the bleak hilltops are interesting to the 
traveler; the forests of maple, chestnut, spruce, 
and hemlock are threaded by winding roadways 
that are pleasant to follow in a spirit of leisurely 
adventuring. The Maine forests have been dimin- 
ished by extensive lumbering; but there is still 
heavy timber, especially in the northern part of the 
state. Brown streams go tumbling down the 
mountains, turning numberless mill-wheels in the 
green valleys. There are many clear, blue lakes 
where the fishing is excellent and where the scenery 
is a constant delight. 

Your visit to Portland on the southwestern coast 
of Maine recalls the early life of the poet Long- 
fellow. You may see his birthplace here; it is*a 
simple New England house, its severe lines softened 
by age. 

Portland is a great seaport and the largest city 
in Maine. You feel the tang of brisk salt winds and 
the very spirit of the sea, as you walk the weather- 
worn streets. Ships from the farthest lands touch 
its wharves. Aristocratic homes in the fashionable 
residence section are a striking contrast to the 
cottages of fisherman and retired sea "Cap'n" who 
lives humbly but happily along the shore near the 
beat of the wind and waves. 



New England 3 

SUMMER RESORTS OF NEW ENGLAND 

A cool summer climate and picturesque scenery- 
make the Maine coast a popular place for resorts. 
You may spend a luxurious vacation at Bar Harbor 
on Mount Desert Island, or you may **rusticate" 
at some quiet cove where the view is even more 
charming. 

The dark pines are scrubby and bent along the 
shore. Marshes stretch away with their waves of 
silvery grasses, and fogs cling softly about the bold 
headlands. There are sweet, wild strawberries in 
early summer; and later come raspberries, black- 
berries, huckleberries, and blueberries. In autumn 
the cranberries grow red among the salt grass on 
the wind-swept marshes. 

Back of Portland you reach the beautiful White 
Mountain region, sometimes called "New Eng- 
land's Summer Hotel." Here is the "Old Man of 
the Mountain," described in Hawthorne's story of 
"The Great Stone Face." The gigantic rock- 
profile gazes out over the peaceful valley, just as it 
has been gazing for centuries. 

You may ascend Mount Washington by a cog- 
wheel railway to the ancient "Tip-Top Inn" of 
rough stones. There is a new hotel, also ; and it is 
chained to the rocks so that it will not blow away. 
From this lofty peak you may gaze about you at 
other lofty peaks and the far stretches of valley and 



Little Journeys in America 



sea. Cities spread before you, and rivers wind their 
way through fertile fields. 

The vegetation changes in an interesting manner 
as you go up the mountain. The forests become 
gradually smaller, until at the top there is only the 
gray, dwarfed shrubbery of Arctic lands. 

Valuable granite 
quarries are found in 
these New Hampshire 
mountains. 

The Green Moun- 
tains of Vermont are 
less famous as a sum- 
mer resort, but you 
will find them very 
beautiful. Forests of 
maple and birch and 
pine shelter the slopes, 
and you may see 
brown sugar-houses in 
the groves of rock- 
maples. These sugar 
trees are "tapped" in early spring; and the 
sap is collected and boiled down in immense kettles 
until it is thick enough to cut in cakes, or else, just 
thick enough for delicious maple syrup. There are 
spruces and firs with gray moss hanging from them ; 
and occasionally a mountain ash lifts its red berries 
on twisting, yellow boughs. 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Tapping Maple Trees 



New England 5 

Down the rivers which flow into Lake Cham- 

- plain, you may watch floating rafts of logs on their 

way to the lumber mills. There are saw-mills 

scattered throughout the central part of the state. 

You will find in this section farm houses that were 
built before the Revolutionary War, and the quaint 
New Englanders who live in them seem to belong 
to some remote pioneer time. 

A SCHOOLHOUSE IN THE WOODS 

An old-fashioned schoolhouse in the heart of the 
woods gathers in its little group of gingham-clad 
children. The teacher boards at one of the better 
farm houses. She walks a mile or more to school, 
and does her own janitor work. In the morning she 
builds a fire in the sheet-iron stove — unless it is 
summer, when the children come barefoot and 
gather flowers or berries on their way to school. 
Birds sing in the trees about the windows, and a 
dashing little brook sounds through the long still- 
ness of the classes in session. 

It must have been just such a school as this of 
which Whittier wrote in his poem called "School 
Days." 

MASSACHUSETTS 

Passing down the Connecticut valley, you enter 
Massachusetts, the oldest of the New England 



6 Little Journeys in America 

States. The Connecticut River cuts its way- 
through the state, the Hoosac Mountains and the 
Berkshire Hills to the west of it, and the low, rolling 
hill ranges and sand dunes to the east of it. In 
western Massachusetts you happen upon Cunning- 
ham, the birthplace of William Cullen Bryant. It 
is a drowsy little village in the midst of rugged hills, 
beautiful in the spring with bowers of wild blos- 
soms, and gorgeous in autumn when sumac and 
blackberry vines flame red and gold along the 
roadways. 

About the village are scattered farms with fields 
of corn and orchards of apple, pear, peach, and 
plum trees. Vegetable gardens and vineyards are 
seen everywhere. 

The people are friendly, with plenty of time to 
stop and chat. If you walk any distance along a 
country road, you are sure to be overtaken by a 
brown-cheeked farmer in a rattling wagon. He will 
pull up and ask you to ride with him. Without 
much urging, he will tell you the news of the neigh- 
borhood, and will probably ask where you live and 
where you are going and if you have ever been in 
"these hyar parts" before. 

At Haverhill you may visit the birthplace of the 
poet W^hittier, and see the old farm which the 
"Qutaker Poet" himself managed for many years. 
This city is now an important center for cotton and 



New England 7 

woolen mills, which are numerous on all the swift- 
flowing New England rivers. 

At Springfield you will visit the great revolver 
and rifle factories ; at Holyoke you will find impor- 
tant paper mills. 

CAPE COD 

In eastern Massachusetts you discover the 
famous Cape Cod region with its interesting farmer 
and fisher folk. Snug little cottages cluster along 
this slender hook of land in the midst of the sea. It 
seems as though they might blow off into the toss- 
ing waves. The farmers seem to raise enough to 
supply their simple needs. There is some fishing 
done, though little as compared to the thriving 
industry of former years. 

Cranberry bogs are plentiful; and other wild 
berries, as well as grapes and plums, are gathered 
in the woods. Hay is cut from the level marsh- 
land, and cows and horses graze in the thin- 
grassed pastures. 

At the very tip of the Cape is Provincetown, 
with its little shops and houses crowded along a 
single street. It has a salty, fishy flavor; and the 
people themselves seem almost a part of the wind- 
swept, wave-battered land. 

WHO FOUNDED RHODE ISLAND? 
Down into little Rhode Island you pass, until 



8 Little Journeys in America 

you come to beautiful Narragansett Bay with its 
islands like bits of garden or rock-strewn sand. 

At Newport are the elegant summer homes of 
many millionaires. During the fashipnable season 
you may watch the parade along Bellevue; or you 
may study the "Old Stone Mill" with its ivy- 
covered tower and decide whether you want to 
attribute its origin to the Norse vikings or to some 
industrious Puritan, who built the sturdy structure 
for a windmill with which to grind his corn. It is a 
picturesque relic, whoever built it; and it has quite 
an air of mystery here in the gay resort. Long- 
fellow's "Skeleton in Armor" gives a poetic 
explanation of the old mill's history. 

Rhode Island proved a friendly haven for Roger 
Williams and his followers when they were driven 
out of Salem by the narrow-minded Puritans. 
Providence, the capital of this smallest state, 
suggests by its name the gratitude of these exiles. 

IN CONNECTICUT 

Saybrook, in Connecticut, is an historic old town 
in which Yale University was originally founded in 
the year 1701. But the university did not prosper, 
and fifteen years later it was moved to the city of 
New Haven. There are old moss-grown cemeteries 
at Saybrook which show, by tombstone engravings, 
the early settlement of the town. They suggest, 



New England 9 

also, the struggle of the early settlers with the 
Indians in which many white men were killed. 

Connecticut is filled with prosperous manu- 
facturing cities and towns. The people are ener- 
getic and thrifty. 



BOSTON, THE PURITAN CITY 

T TNDER the trees on the Boston Common you 
^-^ seem to stand at the center of things in the old 
Puritan town. Boston children are paddling in the 
duck pond with quite as much laughter and hilarity 
as other small folk might display whose great- 
great-great-great grandfathers had not frowned so 
sternly upon the gaiety of life. 

But the elms are very dignified, and the Park 
Street Meeting House is just around the corner, and 
the statehouse on Beacon Hill looms awesomely 
before you. For all real Americans, Boston has 
many treasured shrines. Faneuil Hall, Lexington, 
Concord, Bunker Hill, the Old South Church, — 
there is a sort of patriotic thrill in the very names. 

The Commons, somehow, seems to suggest the 
spirit of them all. Here in the 18th century was 
John Hancock's cow-pasture. But cows were 
surely an important consideration in the old colon- 
ial days, so no one should object to that. Only 
imagine what the poor but proud little Mayflower 
children would have been willing to give for all the 
fresh, creamy milk they wanted, to go with the 
corn bread and fish they had to eat that first 
winter ! 

You remember, of course, that it was the cows 

10 



te ^^^ 


., ■• mil 


^^■»S| V'-T«" 









Line of the Minute Men, Lexington 




Public Garden, Boston Common 



12 Little Journeys in America 

who laid out Boston, and that is why the streets are 
so crooked. Up and down and in and out, wandered 
these early Puritan bossies. And up and down and 
in and out, followed the Puritan fathers and 
mothers and children. Houses were built along the 
winding cow-paths. Churches were located where 
two paths crossed. And behold! The beginnings 
of Boston. 

There were schools, of course, and there must 
have been a few shops, though we hear more about 
the meeting-houses. There were fresh, bubbling 
springs, where both the cows and the Puritans went 
for water. And there were cod and salmon fisheries 
along the "stern and rock -bound coast." 

Almost fifty acres are included in the shaded 
park of the present Common. Adjoining it is 
another, half its size, known as the Public Garden. 
Broad walks border the narrow streets beside the 
park, and other walks wind beneath the stately 
trees. You notice an entrance to the Subway 
which now passes under the Common; but in spite 
of this noisy, underground affair, the birds are 
nesting fearlessly in the elm branches. 

Here in the quiet shadows the first Colonial 
gallants walked with their sweethearts. According 
to one ancient chronicle, they might indulge in this 
sort of frivolity from "a little before sunset till the 
bell at nine o'clock rings them home." What staid 



Boston, the Puritan City 13 

young gallants, we think, to be rung home at nine 
o'clock! 

Here hostile Indians were put to death, and their 
heads displayed on stakes as a gruesome warning 
to their fellows. Duels were fought here, and 
witches were burned. No wonder it is a serious old 
Common. 

YOU DISCOVER "BRIMSTONE CORNER" 

You follow a narrow street to the State House 
atop the hill. It is a beautiful capitol, one of the 
finest in the country. And it, too, seems to belong 
to the spirit of Boston. In the library you find a 
rare heirloom, the "Log of the Mayflower,'''' written 
by Governor Bradford. Typical of the state, too, 
is the carved codfish hanging on a wall in the 
Chamber of Representatives. 

Do you wish a nearer view of "Brimstone Cor- 
ner," with the Park Church and the "Old Granary 
Burying Ground?" It is now a very peaceful 
corner, with little to suggest its terrifying nick- 
name. But it was less tranquil in the olden days. 
You will find many famous names in the ancient 
cemetery. Paul Revere, John Hancock, Peter 
Faneuil, Samuel Adams, James Otis, Governor 
Bellingham — a noble company at rest beneath the 
grasses. 

Beside King's Chapel on Tremont Street is the 



14 Little Journeys in America 

oldest graveyard. Here lie Governor Winthrop 
and other early colonists. You wander through 
puzzling by-streets to Washington street, a main 
thoroughfare of the business section. You pass a 
newspaper office on the site of the house in which 
Franklin was born. 

The narrow street is crowded. Here are stores, 
office buildings, and theaters. You press north 
through the busy throng, and here on your right 
is the Old South Church. Within this venerable 
structure you find historic treasures and an atmos- 
phere of mellow distinction. Here were held those 
secret meetings which prepared for the "Boston 
Tea Party" in 1773. Here the people spoke their 
indignation after the "Boston Massacre" of 1770. 

The square building, with its double galleries, 
has been left as it was built in 1729 to replace a 
similar structure. There are a tall spire and a 
round clock with a queer little balcony above it. 
You are rather glad that the congregation have 
built themselves a "New Old South Church" in a 
more fashionable quarter and have left this time- 
honored meeting-house to its Revolutionary mem- 
ories. 

You press on northward and east to Dock Square 
and Faneuil Hall, the precious "Cradle of Liberty," 
where the spirit of independence was nurtured. 
The first town meetings were held here, and the 



Boston, the Puritan City 15 

early government of Boston was planned, and the 
old walls resounded to the oratory of the Patriots 
before the Revolution. 

WHERE IS MODERN BOSTON? 
It is fascinating to prowl among the relics of the 
past, but modern Boston has also much to offer her 




Faneuil Hall 

visitor. Art, music, plays; a magnificent public 
library; newly built streets with green parks and 
square corners; refined, kindly people who are not 
so snobbish as they are sometimes painted; all these 
meet you in modern Boston. 

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has a thrill for 



16 Little Journeys in America 

music lovers, something like the patriotic signifi- 
cance of Faneuil Hall or Bunker Hill. For many 
years it has meant musical achievement surpassing 
that of any other orchestra in this country. 

Boston is said to be our most English city. She 
is a bit like London, but cleaner. She has tall, 
brick. Back Bay houses of which you have heard. 
She is surpassingly intellectual; and her women, 
particularly, are supposed to be brainy. There is 
said to be a large number of spinsters in Boston. 
We would not think of calling them that in New 
York or San Francisco. One is not sure who is to 
blame for the name, Boston or the spinsters. 

You will find the Public Library a pinkish, 
grayish building with a cloistered court, beautiful 
bronze doors, and a sienna marble staircase. There 
are panels by Puvis de Chavannes, and paintings 
by John Sargent and Edwin A. Abbey. It seems 
natural that Boston should have spent almost two 
and a half millions on this splendid library. It is 
fitting, too, that the paintings should illustrate the 
history of science and literature, the history of 
religion, and the quest of the Holy Grail. 

WHAT DOES BOSTON MANUFACTURE? 

Industries, as well as schools and libraries, are 
important in Boston. What does the Puritan city 
manufacture? Visit some of the little towns which 



Boston, the Puritan City 



17 



have been gathered into the larger city, and you 
will find many wheels whirling. Cotton and 
woolen clothing, shoes, rubbers, watches, chocolate, 
and salted fish; these are a few of the factory pro- 
ducts. Water-power and a good harbor have built 
up these great industries. 

The city is the largest shoe and leather market in 
America, and one of the chief markets for wool, 




Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

salted fish, foodstuffs, and candy. Coal, cotton, 
coffee, sugar, tea, and tropical fruits are important 
imports. 

The peninsula where the old city began has been 
extended into the bay, and the new Boston has also 
grown over the marshy ground at her back. Com- 



18 Little Journeys in America 

mon wealth Avenue in the Back Bay district is all 
*'made" land. Broad and straight, this new street 
extends over a mile, with a parkway of trees down 
its center. In the park are statues of Hamilton, 
Garrison, and other famous New England men. 

In New Boston there are fine residences with 
gardens in front. And here the streets cross at 
right angles instead of mingling irregularly as in the 




Campus, Harvard University 

old town. On Boylston Street are the Museum of 
Natural History and the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology. On Copley Square is the famous 
Trinity Church, in which Phillip Brooks preached. 

WHERE IS OUR OLDEST UNIVERSITY? 

You should not miss a visit to Harvard, across 
the Charles river in sleepy old Cambridge. Ancient 



Boston, the Puritan City 



19 



elms soften the plain brick buildings of the oldest 
of American universities. Harvard began in 1636 
when Cambridge was still a wilderness. 

The long list of alumni includes the names of 
Emerson, Thoreau, Bancroft, Prescott, and others 
equally distinguished. Longfellow, Lowell, and 
Holmes were professors here. You pass the 




Longfellow House 

Craigie House, which was Washington's head- 
quarters when Cambridge was an army camp at the 
beginning of the Revolutionary War. It was after- 
wards the home of Longfellow for forty -five years. 
Across the Charles River in Charlestown is the 



20 



Little Journeys in America 



Bunker Hill Monument. The city has grown up to 
the edges of the little park which surrounds the 
monument. It was open country here when the 
famous battle was fought on June 17, 1775. From 
a grassy hilltop the granite shaft rises 221 feet. 

Beside the monu- 
ment and facing the 
direction of the British 
attack is a bronze 
statue of Prescott. 
You recall his com- 
mand to the waiting 
patriots, *'Don't fire 
until you see the 
whites of their eyes." 
Brave old general ! 
He seems to be stand- 
ing for American lib- 
erty as staunchly as 
ever, silently resolute, 
there on the Boston 




Bunker Hill Monument frCCn 

You may discover traces of the old earthworks 
which were so hastily thrown up on the brow of the 
hill. And a stone marks the spot where Warren 
fell. 

La Fayette laid the cornerstone of the monument 
in 1825. The completed structure was dedicated in 



Boston, the Puritan City 21 

1842. And Daniel Webster delivered the oration 
on each occasion. "We come as Americans to a 
spot which must be forever dear to us and to our 
posterity," said the great orator. 

You may remember that other sentence, "We 
wish that in those days of disaster, which, as they 
come upon all nations, must be expected to come 
upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its 
eyes hitherward, and be assured that the founda- 
tions of our national powers are still strong." 
There have been times when it must have been 
comforting for statesmen to recall these words. 

YOU SAIL OUT FROM THE HARBOR 

It is pleasant to leave Boston by boat, sailing out 
of the harbor with the sunset dying over beyond 
Beacon Hill. With characteristic firmness Boston 
has voted against the skyscraper; and so the city 
rises gradually, tier above tier, with the great State 
House Dome as a center. Back of the city the 
hills rise, and the rivers lead down to the bay. 
Around the city stretch some 17,000 acres of 
meadow and forest and brooks and ponds. Subur- 
ban Boston is an enticing playground. 

The revolving light on Lighthouse Island shows 
for sixteen miles out at sea. You leave the busy 
wharves, the friendly curve of the bay. North- 
ward lies Governor's Island and Fort Winthrop. 



22 Little Journeys in America 

Two bushels of apples a year comprised the rent 
which Governor Winthrop paid for the island. 

Boston lights disappear as your boat sails up the 
coast, but grateful memories of the Puritan City 
remain. "Hub of the Universe," said Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, smiling genially at the New Eng- 
lander's conceit. Well, it is a very diverting 
"Hub," at any rate. And no matter how coldly 
reserved the Back Bay houses may be, there is a 
refined friendliness about Boston. 

There are, moreover, associations and traditions 
which belong to anybody who is able to understand 
the value of American ideals. There are national 
shrines here which every patriotic citizen will enjoy 
visiting. And Boston is glad and proud to hold this 
place in the hearts of her countrymen. 



THE ATLANTIC SLOPE 

TT^OR a trip through the Catskills you should 
■■■ choose the mellow autumn season, such as lured 
Rip Van Winkle on his memorable journey to the 
mysterious mountain glen. The veils of blue haze 
over hills and valleys, the smell of frost-kissed 
leaves, and the lilting call of birds flying south will 
stir your gipsy blood as they must have Rip's 
when he rambled forth with dog and gun, defying 
Dame Van Winkle. 

You catch enticing glimpses of the Catskill 
country from the train windows or a Hudson River 
steamer. But to enjoy the real spirit of the 
region you should walk through a wooded ravine 
with leaves rustling beneath your feet and glowing 
red and gold above you. Gentians are blue along 
the sheltered paths, and squaw berries sprinkle the 
ground with dots of crimson. 

Some passing crows caw harshly overhead, and a 
bobolink trails his half -musical notes through the 
winey air. A brisk stream bubbles beside you, and 
a bridge leads into a road with a gray wooden house 
far up the mountain. A cow bell tinkles in a 
friendly fashion, and a ribbon of smoke waves 
from the roof of the farmhouse. It was rather 
lonely in the wild glen, and you are glad to see the 

23 



24 Little Journeys in America 

house and a woman in a blue dress and a pink 
sunbonnet. 

You pass other farmhouses as you tramp along, 
but they are rather infrequent ; and if you are trust- 
ing to the shelter of one of them for the nighty you 
begin to inquire about lodging. 

A farm among the Catskills is a quiet spot. 
Planting, harvesting, and long, winter months of 
snow lying deep in the leafy ravines — it seems a 
very peaceful monotony. You may go berrying in 
summer or nutting in the fall. Squirrel shooting is 
as popular a sport as it was in Rip Van Winkle's day. 
Early to bed and early to rise seems to be the rule. 
On some farms there are well-sweeps and old 
oaken buckets; or perhaps a spring trickles into a 
trough through a pipe beside the house. 

HOW DO THEY MAKE A LIVING? 

There are cows to milk and feed and drive to 
pasture, for dairying is an important industry. 
In this rural solitude. New York City seems very 
far away; but it gets much of its milk and cheese 
and butter from the little farms "up state." Fields 
of corn, oats, and hay provide feed for stock; and 
vegetables and small fruit are raised for the city 
market. The farmer's wood grows near at hand. 
He raises his own meat, milk, fruit, vegetables, and 
poultry. His wife makes soap by the barrel in a 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 



Niagara Falls 



26 Little Journeys in America 

huge kettle in the back yard. He has Httle to buy 
except clothing and farm machinery. 

From Albany to Buffalo you pass larger farms 
and many creameries and dairy barns. At Buffalo 
you are interested in one thing — Niagara. 

"The Thunder of Waters" is the meaning of the 
Indian name; and it seems appropriate, especially if 
you take the wild ride behind the falls. Such a 
roaring and splashing fills your ears ! You seem to 
be penetrating some unearthly din of subterranean 
seas. You are dizzy and numb with the force of it. 

THE LEAP OF THE WATERS 

Below the falls you may watch the rainbow mists 
shimmering above the foaming waters. With a 
leap of 165 feet the slighter cataract of the Ameri- 
can side of Niagara River plunges over a sheer 
precipice. The Canadian falls are about 158 feet 
high but much broader than the American. For a 
mile above the falls the waters have been descend- 
ing and gathering speed. At the very edge of the 
cataract, Goat Island separates the channel, and 
about nine-tenths of the waters go over the Cana- 
dian side where an abrupt bend shapes them into 
a horseshoe curve. 

But you are not much interested in figures and 
measurements during your first view of the. mighty 
torrent, rushing and swirling on its thunderous way. 



The Atlantic Slope 27 

You are awed by the immensity and power, by the 
desperate wildness of the leap. It is vast and 
beautiful and not a little solemn. 

And you find that the falls seem different at 
different times. They fascinate you with swiftly 
changing moods. You should see them in moon- 
light with the gloom of dark shadows and the 
joyous flashing of silver spray. Sometimes they 
depress you with the everlasting tumult ; the waters 
seem to be crying some fateful dirge. Again they 
shout and ripple with a kind of elfish glee. 

You may gather many interesting facts con- 
cerning the power of Niagara. It was used to 
operate a sawmill as early as 1704. In 1901 the 
organization of companies, planning to make an 
extensive use of the water-power, threatened to 
destroy the beauty of the falls, and the amount of 
water which could be used was limited. 

A treaty between Great Britian and the United 
States provided that the total amount of water 
diverted for power purposes must not exceed 
56,000 cubic feet per second. Of this Canada may 
have 36,000 feet and the United States 20,000. 

A LUMBER AND GRAIN MARKET 

You find Buffalo an attractive city with broad 
streets, beautiful parks, and a busy harbor where 
much grain is received and transferred. There is a 



28 Little Journeys in America 

spicy smell of freshly cut wood around the wharves, 
for this is one of the largest lumber markets in the 
world. From the Middle West come great cars of 
live stock, and huge barges ply along the Erie 
canal to the Hudson River at Albany. Steamers 
come and go in the stream of lake traffic. There 
are machine shops, flour mills, and other important 
manufactories. 

Passing from New York into western Pennsyl- 
vania, you enter the great coal region of the 
Atlantic Slope. The wealth of these Appalachian 
coal beds has made Pittsburgh one of the greatest 
of manufacturing cities. You see great shafts 
and tunnels and narrow little railroads leading 
out of the mines. 

A GREAT BATTLEFIELD 

Near the central southern boundary of Pennsyl- 
vania is the famous battlefield of Gettysburg. 
The town of Gettysburg lies in the plain between 
two long parallel ridges, Seminary Ridge on the 
north and Cemetery Ridge on the south. It is a 
place of monuments. You may count more than 
500 of bronze, marble, granite, or boulder. 

It seems a sad and tragic little valley, no matter 
how rosy the old "Peach Orchard" blooms nor 
how gaily the grass waves where the wheat field 
was overrun on those terrible July days in 1863. 



The Atlantic Slope 29 

In the National Cemetery, which was dedicated in 
November of the same year as the Battle of Gettys- 
burg, there are over 3,500 soldiers buried. This 
was the center of the Union lines; and a great 
battle monument, topped by a statue of Liberty, 
was erected here after the close of the Civil War. 

It was at the dedication of this cemetery that 
Lincoln delivered the celebrated Gettysburg 
address — "the twenty-line address" it has been 
called. "The world will little note nor long 
remember what we say here," he declared. But 
the world has remembered Lincoln's speech, 
as well as the deeds of the soldiers he was 
honoring. There is power in words, it seems, 
when they ring with the simple truth and dignity 
of these. 

You look out over the monuments, over the 
crags and stones of the "Devil's Den," over the 
grassy slopes of the "Valley of Death." Beyond 
Gettysburg to the south are the same tall trees 
which caught the smoke of battle. Mounted 
cannon bristle along the edge of "Big Round Top." 
The equestrian statue of Reynolds, the dashing 
"Massachusetts Color Bearer," may be seen and 
thousands of unknown graves are around you. 

You remember Lincoln's words, "that govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth." It was a great 



30 Little Journeys in America 

price paid for an ideal of democracy. Surely it was 
not all an idle dream. 

ALONG THE ATLANTIC 

From Gettysburg it is not far to Washington; 
and down the Potomac is Mount Vernon, where 
every steamboat tolls its bell as it passes the tomb 
of George Washington, the first great American. 
A few hours by train or boat take you to New 
York. They are making the trip by airplane, too, 
flying gaily above the route where the old stage- 
coaches used to lumber along. 

Across Deleware and Maryland and up through 
New Jersey you pass farms and woodlands, and 
many neat-looking villages where the stage use to 
stop for a change of horses. Level, sandy stretches 
border the coast, which is broken by many small 
bays. A little way back are ranges of hills which 
are covered with dogwood and cedar. 

The New Jersey seacoast is lined with resorts. 
Atlantic City is the largest, and thousands of 
people gather here in the summer season. Here 
is the famous boardwalk extending for nine miles 
beside the ocean. On one side are hotels and 
amusement places, and on the other side is the 
beach and the tumbling waves. From the walk 
there are long piers extending into the waters ; and 
these contain music halls, cafes, picture theaters 



The Atlantic Slope 31 

and other places of entertainment. Bathing, 
saiHng, fishing, and a country club and golf links 
provide diversion for the many pleasure-seekers. 

As you near New York, the villages are so close 
together that it seems one continuous city with 
occasional parks and gardens. Streets are lined 
with fine old trees; and there are beautiful homes 
where many New York people live, and "commute" 
by train and ferry. These towns are so restful 
that you cannot blame the inhabitants for pre- 
ferring them to the crowded city. 

A VISIT TO LONG ISLAND 

Long Island is a level, sandy strip of land with 
market gardens and quaint, old-fashioned houses, 
which are being replaced with modern cottages 
along the seaside. Here, also, are summer hotels 
and amusement parks such as Coney Island and 
Rockaway Beach. But there are still many dwel- 
lings which were built in Colonial times. One of 
these is the birthplace of John Howard Payne, the 
author of "Home, Sweet Home." The house is a 
pleasant "homey" structure with its gray, sloping 
roof, its great chimney, and many small-paned 
windows. Trees cluster about it, and the yard is 
enclosed with a picket fence. 

Old windmills lift their huge white arms along 
many country ways. They were built to grind 



32 Little Journeys in America 

corn and wheat in the days before modern machin- 
ery began to do this work in the cities. Now many 
of the old windmills are idle, but a few still turn 
out their golden "grists." They are picturesque 
structures, built to withstand the force of tugging 
gales and heavy grinding-s tones. 

At the west end of Long Island is Brooklyn with 
a busy water front, where you may watch the 
teeming harbor of New York. Steamers from 
Panama, South America, Liverpool, Hamburg, 
the Mediterranean, and other distant ports pass 
through the Narrows to Upper New York Bay. 
On the Brooklyn side there are immense ware- 
houses, and you see great piles of freight waiting to 
be shipped or stored. 

Brooklyn is really a part of New York City, 
and here you look on at the vast trade center and 
realize something of the extent of the railway and 
steamship traffic. You see bags of coffee and nuts 
from Brazil, hides from other South American 
countries, bales of cotton from Texas and Louis- 
iana, vast quantities of raw material and many 
manufactured products as well. 

Tall chimneys of suglar refineries on the Brooklyn 
side and oil refineries across in New Jersey suggest 
some of the industries which the ships and trains 
supply. The New York skyscrapers remind you 
of the huge clothing factories, of the famous 



The Atlantic Slope 33 

publishing houses, and the thousands of mills 
and shops which crowd this great metropolis. 
Across the bay come creeping barges with coal 
from the Pennsylvania mines to operate this 
wilderness of trains and boats and hotels and 
factories. Yet only a little way up the Hudson 
are the lonely Catskills and the old cabin of Rip 
Van Winkle in its sleepy, leaf -strewn hollow. 

The Atlantic Slope states are rich in a variety of 
products, including coal, lumber, grain, stock, 
fruit, garden vegetables, and butter, milk and 
cheese. Farms supply only local demands of the 
large cities, however, and cannot compare with 
the Central and Western states in extent of agri- 
cultural interests. Fishing is still important 
though far from being the industry of former 
years. The greatest manufactories are found in 
the larger cities, which are our chief centers of 
trade. Clothing, steel and iron goods, shoes, 
books, and cereals are a few of the leading products. 



NEW YORK, THE CITY OF TOWERS 

'VTEW YORK and skyscrapers — the two ideas 
■^^ are associated more or less in everybody's 
mind. Other cities have their lofty buildings, to 
be sure, but not quite such exulting pinnicles as has 
Manhattan. If you enter the city from her 
splendid harbor, you cannot fail to be thrilled 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 



New York City 



by the great towers lifting themselves in a massive, 
irregular row, glistening in the sunshine, flashing 
their golden-windowed spires against the night. 
You may have thought of skyscrapers as heavy 
and ugly. These are like fairy castles — across the 
sea at night. 

34 



New York, the City of Towers 35 



The giant Statue of 
Liberty seems a fitting 
hostess for such a city. 
Holding her torch 
aloft, she welcomes 
you from her pedes- 
tal among the waves. 
When you have land- 
ed and looked about 
you, the towers seem 
more substantial; but 
there are broad ave- 
nues and open squares 
to relieve the sense of 
crowding. 

If you will go on a 
clear day to the top of 
one of New York's 
tallest buildings, you 
may gain an impres- 
sive view of her teem- 
ing greatness. Again 
the towers, large and 
small, meet you on all 
sides. If you choose 
the Municipal Build- 
ing for your obser- 
vatory, you may look 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

The Statue of Liberty 

across and up at the 



36 Little Journeys in America 

cream-colored Woolworth structure — fifty-seven 
stories, 792 feet, to the top of what is now the 
tallest office building in the world. The heavy 
shoulders of masonry lift the towering single 
column with perfect balance. Hundreds of clerks 
and stenographers, business men and office boys 
stream into this building every morning and out 
every night, just as they stream in and out of 
dozens of other less lofty neighbors. Like many 
other great achievements, the Woolworth Building 
seems a kind of monument to the value of little 
things; for it was built by a man who made a 
fortune selling all sorts of small articles at five 
and ten cents a piece. 

CRAWLING CARS AND CROWDS 

Other towers rise from the giant's web spread 
before you. Streamers of smoke float out and melt 
away. Roofs spread in terraces along the Hudson, 
stretching on and on, over to Jersey and beyond 
the bridges of the East River. Streets reach 
hungrily in every direction, and over them crawl 
the cars and crowds. 

People are queer, busy pigmies when seen from 
the top of a New York skyscraper. They pour 
out of the subway in blurred black masses. They 
flutter along broad avenues and into narrow cross- 
streets. Above them reach the many-windowed 



New York, the City of Towers 37 

buildings, the spires and chimneys, and the 
elevated tracks. To the south lies the Atlantic 
Ocean in a far, shimmering line. 

When you have finished your bird's-eye view 
from the top of the tower, you may be at a loss to 
choose the things you most want to see in New 
York. It would be a little strange if you should 
not find it difficult to choose. People who have 
lived in New York all their lives are often un- 
familiar with the most interesting things in their 
city. There are so many interesting things; and 
many people, as you have seen, are kept busy in 
the tall buildings. 

If you take a bus up Fifth Avenue, you finally 
come to the homes of some of the men who have 
built the skyscrapers. And on the way you see 
other interesting places. From the top of the bus 
you may study the ingenious signs or the really 
lovely cornices. You may peer into the second- 
story windows of shops where gorgeous gowns are 
displayed on smirking wax models, or into book 
stores and ware rooms and busy offices. You 
bump across the car tracks and cringe as you 
jostle close under the elevated. 

A MIDDLE-AGED HORSE AND A HAUGHTY 
COACHMAN 

In front of you moves a long, motley procession 
of automobiles, buses, and frequently a huge 



38 Little Journeys in America 

wagon drawn by a heavy team of draft horses. 
Occasionally there is an old-fashioned "hansom" 
with a very stiff coachman on top, holding the 
reins in a very haughty manner over the back of a 
sleek, important-looking horse. There is usually 
an air of aristocratic middle-age about the liveried 
driver. Usually the people inside of the carriage 
are rather elderly, also ; and the whole party seems 
to be clinging just a bit obstinately to what we are 
apt to call the quaintness of the past. 

The horse halts his high, mincing steps pro- 
testingly when the traffic policeman waves a halt. 
The quietly-dressed ladies or the thin, gray -haired 
gentlemen peer out of the windows at the lines of 
braying motors. But the coachman, sitting aloft, 
seems unmindful of the throng. He looks straight 
ahead between his bristling side-whiskers, and he 
loosens the reins with an assumption of well-bred 
calm when the policeman waves the crowd on. 

As you progress along the avenue, the heavy 
trucks grow less frequent; and there are more old 
coachmen with antiquated carriages. If it is late 
afternoon or evening your bus is halted at frequent 
intervals; the whole honking, hurrying procession 
is halted, while street cars and hurrying crowds 
and busses and automobiles cross in front of you. 
You have passed Madison Square, once the centre 
of the fashionable residence section. Madison 



New York, the City of Towers 39 

Square Garden is on the site of Barnum's Hippo- 
drome. On the Square is the MetropoHtan Build- 
ing, almost as tall as the Wool worth. Its clock is 
three stories high. 

*'YOU G'WAN AND YOU G'WAN" 

As in the old negro lullaby, "You g'wan and you 
g'wan and you g'wan, g'wan, g'wan," and still the 
procession grows. You pass beautiful shops, 
each with its specialty, — jewelry, books, rugs, 
flowers, Japanese vases, millinery, pictures. At 
Forty -second Street you see the central library 
building with its stone lions and pillars, on the 
corner at your left. 

Off the Avenue to your right is the Grand Central 
Station, one of the finest depots in the world where 
travelers from everywhere surge about at all hours 
of the day and night. Clustered around this are 
some of the largest hotels in New York, including 
the Commodore, the tallest hotel building in the 
world. Near here are the Republican Club, the 
Army and Navy, and the Harvard and Yale Clubs. 

You pass along the east side of Central Park, 
897 acres of meadow, woodland, lakes and rocky 
ledges. Here, on your right, are homes of some 
of the wealthy business men who have to do with 
the down-town skyscrapers. They are beautiful 
residences, spreading themselves in small parks of 



40 Little Journeys in America 

their own which may not be compared, after all, 
with the vast public park here in the midst of the 
city or with the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
opposite Eighty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. 

You and I are probably not acquainted with 
many of the Fifth Avenue millionaires; and they 
might be too busy to entertain us, if we were. But 
we don't have to be acquainted with anybody in 
New York to gain admission to the great museum 
of painting, sculpture, potteries, porcelains, Egyp- 
tian and Roman antiquities, and all the vast store 
of interesting and beautiful treasures gathered 
from the four corners of the earth and kept in this 
home, which the city owns and takes care of. 

On most days the museum is free to the public. 
If we happen to strike it on pay days, Monday and 
Friday of each week, we are charged a small fee. 
This might be a good place to end your bus ride, 
if you are interested in the things which have been 
treasured through the ages as being of most value 
and interest to the people of all times. You could 
spend many days in any one department of the 
great storehouse, and one day will give you only a 
bewildered sense of what is there. Yet a short 
visit is worth while. And in a hurried half hour 
you may find something which thrills you with its 
truth or its beauty, something which you will 
remember all the rest of your days. 



New York, the City of Towers 41 

VISITING CENTRAL PARK 

Cleopatra's Needle, at the rear of the Art 
Museum, was presented by the Khedive of Egypt 
and brought to Central Park some forty years ago. 
It is a tall, slender obelisk which was hewn out of 
stone and erected at Cairo in the 16th century b. c. 
It is covered with hieroglyphics, which are mean- 
ingless to you and me, but which doubtless told 
thrilling tales to the old Egyptians. It seems that 
these ancient people of the Nile had their idea of 
skyscrapers, too; and we quite approve of them 
even though they were so different from ours. 

The American Museum of Natural History at 
Central Park, West and Seventy-seventh Street con- 
tains complete exhibits illustrating the customs and 
life of various races of men. You will enjoy the 
excellent specimens of birds and animals of all 
ages, mounted in settings which suggest their own 
wild environment. 

A GREAT UNIVERSITY 

Supposing your first day in New York to be a 
sort of magic "days of days" in which you will 
not get weary with much travel and which will 
last until you have seen a few of the really fasci- 
nating spots in the city! Then you might leave 
the museums with the master paintings and sculp- 
tures, the art and history of the ages; and you could 



42 Little Journeys in America 

wind by a stony footpath through Central Park, 
across rustic bridges and under massive aqueducts, 
beside the lakes and undpr the trees until you came 
to the spires of a great cathedral, the largest in 
America, though still unfinished. It is Saint John 
the Divine, and stands at the northwest corner of 
the park. The cornerstone of this great church 
was laid in 1892. 

Beyond the Cathedral to the north and west is 
Columbia, one of the great universities of this 
country. The most imposing approach is up the 
long series of steps to the Library with its pillars, 
its stately statue of Alma Mater, and its beautiful 
halls and courts. There are pleasant campus 
walks and nooks inside the iron gateways at the 
back of the Library under the tall old trees. Vines 
which cling to the gray buildings, are crimson 
masses in autumn when red and yellow leaves 
flutter down over the statue of the Great God Pan. 
The city presses close about, but there is still an air 
of scholarly seclusion on the grassy campus or 
within the many buildings. 

Just beyond the university you find Riverside 
Park, a narrow strip of carefully kept woodland 
along the Hudson. Here you may shut the city 
quite away by just descending the stone steps that 
lead to the grassy terraces and magnificent old 
trees behind the high, vine-covered wall, separating 



New York, the City of Towers 43 

the park from the drive above. You feed the 
squirrels, so tame that they eat from your hand, 
and watch the boats coming and going on the river 
below. 

Up the drive is Grant's tomb, of shining white 
marble, with the gingko tree at its side, planted by 
Li Hung Chang. Still further north, away up in 
the Bronx, you find the Poe cottage where one of 
our greatest and saddest poets lived, and wrote. 

THE SUBWAY AND THE EAST SIDE 

Even a fleeting glimpse of New York would be 
incomplete without a bit of her lower East Side, 
the most densely populated district in America. 
And New York without the subway would be 
quite inconceivable. O. Henry, the story-writer, 
called the city "Bagdad on the Subway," you 
may remember. And the quickest route to the 
East Side, as to almost any other place in New 
York, is by way of the subway. 

So down the steps to the under-world you go, 
saying goodbye to fresh air and daylight for a time. 
You wait on the long platform until your train 
arrives. There are always people waiting, some- 
times vast crowds of them. Down the tracks as 
far as you can see, the lights blink in the black 
tunnel. 

With a shriek and a roar the train sweeps in. 



44 Little Journeys in America 

doors fly open, and you step aboard to go swinging 
and grinding and shrieking and roaring toward 
town. At the rush hours the stations are thronged. 
People sweep on in crowds and off in crowds. You 
are shoved and jammed and elbowed into the 
smallest possible space. The guards jam the gates 
shut. If anybody's shoulders stick out, a guard 
obligingly pushes them in. He brushes aside those 
left struggling toward the train, and you are off 
again. 

At Times Square you take the "Shuttle," a 
cross-town subway that puts you on the East 
Side system. You surge into another train with a 
fresh mob of pushers, and away you go through the 
noise and blackness and glinting lights. You 
leave the train at lower Broadway and ascend the 
steps to find yourself in another world. You go 
east a few blocks; and the Ghetto is about you — 
or perhaps Little Italy or a bit of old Ireland. 

Here you find the dirty streets swarming with 
children, and foreign men and women chattering 
over their push carts or fruit stands which are 
crowded along the already narrow walks. Under 
the thundering elevated tracks on Third Avenue 
you may buy fruit or fish or dill pickles from carts 
or barrels beside the curb. The swarthy salesmen 
may have trouble understanding your questions, 
for the elevated trains are very noisy; and the 



New York, the City of Towers 45 



people in this neighborhood are not well acquainted 
with the English language. 

You would perhaps have greater difficulty under- 
standing the Russian or Italian or dozen other 
foreigners. But conversation is not really neces- 
sary. There are pieces of cardboard with the 



t 






"^^^ll 


Hi^'w%l^iHinHB 


.^y,, 

m 


g^^ 










s^'iiif"' 


IS 


■■i9*9' ^^11^ 


Ik W^ . 


«*i' '.k- » " - -.- 


m 







Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

East Siders, Christmas Shopping 

prices of things plainly marked. You pick out 
what you want and hand over your money. The 
chattering market men and women will count out 
your change. 

Queer sheet-iron ovens are trundled along the 
street. Sometimes kettles are placed over smoking 



46 Little Journeys in America 

bonfires. From these out-door stoves you may 
get hot baked sweet potatoes, if you don't mind 
the dirty fingers of the greasy baker. Apples, 
bananas, oranges, onions, spaghetti, sausages, candy 
— all sorts of foods are ricked on the push-carts, 
usually as dirty as the market regulations will 
allow, sometimes dirtier. 

Women with shawls over their heads sit holding 
their babies beside their wares. Old and young, 
they crowd the noisy avenue. Some of them sell 
cheap laces or bolts of cloth or wreaths of paper 
flowers. Down the side streets are towering 
tenements with lines of clothes flapping above 
your head. Doorways are crowded with mothers 
and babies. There is much laughing and eating; 
and sometimes a hurdy-gurdy plays, and the 
children dance and clap their hands. 

INTERESTING LAND MARKS 

On the edge of the densest foreign belt is old 
Cooper Union and the statue of Peter Cooper, a 
man who believed in a free education for every- 
body. Here are a free museum, library, and classes 
in the arts and sciences where thousands of New 
York's foreigners are learning to become useful and 
loyal citizens. 

• In this tenement district known as the Bowery, 
is old Saint Mark's, dating from 1795 and built on 



New York, the City of Towers 47 



the oldest church site in the city. In the church- 
yard is the tomb of Peter Stuyvesant, the famous 
Dutch governor of the early days when the village 
at the mouth of the Hudson was New Amsterdam 
or New York, according to the fortunes of the 
Dutch and English across the seas. It is pleasant 
to slip into the old churchyard under the ancient 
trees and almost forget the seething, picturesque 
Bowery outside. 

Back to the skyscrapers again on Lower Man- 
hattan, you should not miss a glimpse of Park 
Row with its famous newspaper buildings and the 
statues of Horace 
Greely and Benjamin 
Franklin. Near at 
hand is the old City 
Hall built in 1812, 
with paintings and 
relics in the "Gover- 
nor's Room," and the 
statue of Nathan Hale 
in the little park. 

You will want to 
visit Saint Paul's, the 
oldest church edifice 
in the city, built in 

1/04. Xlere you may cgpy^igi^f underwood and Underwood 
sit in Washington's Trinity Church 




48 Little Journeys in America 

pew and imagine yourself back in Colonial times, 
or you may walk in the churchyard and read 
inscriptions on grave stones hundreds of years old. 
The graves seem very peaceful under the trees in 
spite of the cars and crowds on all sides of the tiny 
square of struggling green. A few blocks on is 
Trinity Church with its little yard for the distin- 
guished dead of past centuries. 

At Battery Park at the foot of Broadway is the 
squat Aquarium, originally a battery and then 
Castle Square Garden, where Jennie Lind sang in 
1850. It is now the home of a vast horde of fish, 
turtles, and grunting sea lions. You would find 
the stores and theaters of New York not vastly 
different from those of other cities, except, perhaps, 
the charming and expensive shops along Fifth 
Avenue. 

On the great White Way the gay crowds are 
gayer only because there are more of them; and 
there are both the beautiful and the garish in 
gowns and jewels and fashionable hotels. The 
charm of books and plays and music, the glitter of 
wealth, the grime of poverty, the grind of toil — 
New York has them all. And between the ex- 
tremes of all sorts there are delightfully ordinary, 
middle-sorts of people and places, more than is 
often imagined by people who know only one or 
two of the many different kinds of life in New York. 



New York, the City of Towers 49 

The city is the great pubHshing center of America 
and is foremost in many sorts of manufacturing 
and trade. The garment industry is a very impor- 
tant one, the manufacture of cereals, shoes, iron 
goods, and other staple products occupies thou- 
sands of workers. Ships crowd the harbor bringing 
coffee, nuts, hides, cotton, coal, iron ore, crude 
oil, sugar, and many other imports. Oil and sugar 
refineries are conspicuous in Brooklyn and across 
the harbor in New Jersey. Fruit, lumber, grain, 
and dairy products come in, also, by train and 
boat. 

If you stop for a moment to think of the reason 
for this city, the world's metropolis if we include 
"Greater New York," you will remember first of 
all that there is an excellent harbor in a direct 
route from the great centers of Europe. And you 
will remember that New York is in the open path- 
way from the most productive parts of the United 
States. No mountain wall of the Appalachians 
shuts her away, as Boston and Philadelphia are 
shut away from the grain, stock, cotton, coal, and 
hundreds of other products of the West and North 
and South. Having these natural commercial 
advantages, New York has made the most of them. 
No wonder she has become our greatest city. 



WASHINGTON, THE NATIONAL 
CAPITAL 

AS YOU enter the great Union Station at Wash- 
ington, the long vista of arches and columns 
gives you a thrill of expectation. You may even 
wonder a little fearfully if the famous government 
buildings will not be over-shadowed by the 
imposing new depot and the City Post Office at its 
side. 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 



National Capitol 
50 



Washington, the aSTational Capital 51 



But when you catch sight of the majestic old 
Capitol on its sweeping hilltop, flanked at either 
hand by the new office buildings for members of 
the Senate and the House of Representatives, you 
realize that this simple, beautiful structure is 
perfectly capable of holding its own. You are 
impressed with the commanding dignity of this 
seat of national authority, this centre of world 
interest and activity. The architecture of the 
newer buildings has been subordinated to that of 
the Capitol, in order that a fitting unity may be 
attained, with the center of interest in the great 
historic edifice. 

You look down the broad, shaded streets 
radiating away from the Capitol, at the green 
parkings of the Mall 
leading to the Wash- 
ington Monument, the 
Lincoln Temple and 
the shining Potomac 
beyond. You are 
stirred by the spa- 
cious beauty and har- 
mony of the scene. 

More than any 
other city, Washing- 
ton belongs to the na- 
tion, and so contains 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 
The White House 



52 Little Journeys in America 

something of interest for everybody. Not all of us 
will be most impressed by the same things, but 
each will find a spirit of inspiration about the 
stately halls, the lofty monument, the quaint, old- 
fashioned White House, or the great museums and 
libraries. The Capitol has grown from the corner- 
stone laid by Washington in 1793 to an impressive, 
though simple structure, which reflects the chang- 
ing history of our rapidly changing nation. 

STORIES IN STREETS AND BUILDINGS 

As you look down Pennsylvania Avenue to the 
White House, you seem to feel something of the 
great dramatic moments which the old street has 
known. Down this avenue with the sheltering 
trees have come the great inaugural processions — 
leaders, flags, uniforms, martial music in the 
pageantry of actual historic events. Here the 
victorious Union Army marched in the "Grand 
Review" of 1865, and some of those blue-coated 
veterans lived to see the young soldiers in khaki 
returning the same way, from the battlefields of 
Europe in 1919. 

If you enter the Capitol at the center of the east 
front, you pass through the lofty columned portico 
in which most of our presidents have been in- 
augurated. Over the massive bronze door is a 
bas-relief of Washington being crowned with 



Washington, the National Capital 53 

laurel by Fame and Peace. The door itself bears 
scenes illustrating the life of Columbus. The 
Senate and House wings, which extend from the 
central part of the Capitol, are approached by 
similar porticoes, supported by massive marble 
columns. 

In the grand rotunda beyond the great bronze 
door is a series of paintings by American art- 
ists, set in panels around the circular walls. One 
may journey through these pictured stories to the 
Landing of Columbus at San Salvador, the Dis- 
covery of the Mississippi by De Sota, the Baptism 
of Pocahontas, or the Embarkation of the Pilgrims 
from Delft Haven in Holland. Trumbull's Revolu- 
tionary War paintings portray from life many of 
the distinguished men who took part in our struggle 
for independence. 

IN THE "WHISPERING GALLERY" 

Above the rotunda,, 185 feet in height, is the 
interior of the great dome with its frescoes of 
historic events. By a circular iron stairway you 
may climb around and around under this immense 
spherical roof to the cupola beneath the Statue of 
Liberty which tops the outside of the dome. From 
this cupola you may gain a splendid view out over 
the city and the Capitol grounds. 

Down in the Hall of Statues, which was for 



54 Little Journeys in America 

nearly fifty years the hall of the old House of 
Representatives, you may wish to linger. In the 
dome of this semi-circular chamber is the mys- 
terious "whispering gallery." The ceiling is 
painted in panels in imitation of the Pantheon at 
Rome. All about are the statues sent by the dif- 
ferent states to occupy each its niche in this 
common hall of fame. The eloquence of former 
statesmen has thus been replaced by silent 
memories, by tributes to those the nation has 
esteemed. The voices of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, 
Lincoln, and many other orators rang through 
this chamber in the earlier days, when some of the 
greatest national questions were settled by these 
distinguished representatives. But now the hall 
is quiet with only its ghostly echoes of the past. 

In the present chambers of the House and 
Senate a new activity surges, new voices speak, 
new questions are debated by the living repre- 
sentatives of our great democracy. Recently in 
the streets and halls and assemblies the clash of a 
world war has sounded and grown silent. 

Back of the Capitol, on the square facing the 
east side, is the Congressional Library with a floor 
space of nearly eight acres and book stacks con- 
taining about one hundred miles of shelving. It 
is said to be the largest and most magnificent of 
library buildings and to contain one of the most 



Washington, the National Capital 55 



notable collections of books. A force of five 
hundred librarians is employed and there are 
provisions for nearly 
1,000 readers at a 
time. Four enclosed 
courts and a cen- 
tral rotunda, stately 
staircases and col- 
umns and statuary 
are features of this 
harmonious s t r u c - 
ture, which is really 
a national temple of 
literature and art. 
Brilliant paintings 
and colorful frescoes 
suggest the history 
of our country. The decorations are entirely the 
work of American architects, painters and sculptors. 
More than fifty men are represented, and the build- 
ing is thus a splendid exhibit and memorial of our 
native ability and attainment. 

THE BEAUTIFUL WASHINGTON MONUMENT 

You will find the towering marble obelisk of 
Washington Monument impressive from every 
point of view. Its white shaft rises majestically 
from the sweep of park between the Capitol and 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Interior, Library of Congress 



56 Little Journeys in America 

the Lincoln Memorial. It is 555 feet from the base 
to the tip. You may climb its 900 steps in about 
twenty minutes or make the trip in seven minutes 
by elevator. And you will discover a splendid 
outlook at the top. 

From the distant Blue Ridge Mountains you 
may glimpse the monument, a slim, shining pencil 
of silver; or you may view it at the end of a vista 
through the Treasury columns, or see it stretching 
above the roofs of the city at night. But always 
it is beautiful, cool gray, a bluish silver, or golden 
and rose in the glow of sunset. It gives a sense 
of restfulness and peace, this memorial to our 
first president, which was over ninety years in the 
building. 

With the Potomac as a background for its 
exquisite Greek columns, the Lincoln Memorial 
Temple is appropriately placed at the end of the 
long vista of the Mall. The Capitol, the Washing- 
ton Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial form 
an impressive and harmonious group with just 
the right emphasis of open spaces. 

Within the Monument is the figure of Lincoln by 
Daniel Chester French, a statue seated that if 
erect would rise twenty-eight feet from the base. 
Under Jules Guerin's mural paintings you may 
read in bronze the immortal words of the Gettys- 
burg and Second Inaugural speeches. The light 



Washington, the National Capital 57 

filters through transhicent marble panels between 
bronze ceiling beams. 

AT THE GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS 

Among the glowing plants and birds in the patio 
of the Pan-American building, you may feel the 
luxuriant atmosphere of the tropics. Here are 
sunlight and open sky and restful arches to set off 
the gorgeous color of flowers and plumage. The 
whole structure is warm and gracious, a most 
successful architectural expression. 

For one dollar, Charles L. Freer sold to the 
United States in 1906 art collections valued at 
many millions. He then added a million dollars to 
provide a suitable home for the treasures, and 
placed the whole under the direction of the Smith- 
sonian Institute at Washington. The Freer Art 
Gallery has now been erected ; and among its many 
attractions you will remember best the splendid 
Oriental collection and the work of the "chosen 
Americans." Among the latter artists is Whistler 
with 1,200 examples including the famous "Pea- 
cock Room" with its glory of blues and purples. 

Of the other buildings the lilac-gray towers of 
the Smithsonian Institute will be worth your in- 
vestigation as well as the National Museum, 
covering two and a half acres and situated on the 
Smithsonian grounds. These two museums con- 



58 Little Journeys in America 

tain our best collections of mounted birds and 
animals, and of vegetable, mineral, and industrial 
exhibits. The Washington relics, swords, and 
other gifts presented to General Grant, besides 
the large Botanical Gardens containing the rarest 
plants and flowers from all over the world are here. 
The Corcoran Gallery is a handsome museum of 
private origin. 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Smithsonian Institute 

Down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol, 
you come upon the portals of the White House 
with their lingering charm of southern hospitality. 
The spacious grounds opposite La Fayette Park are 
shaded with fine oaks, poplars, and sycamores. 
Flowers and fountains are beautiful in summer- 



Washington, the National Capital 59 

time. Inside are rooms long known for their public 
gatherings, where the greatest diplomats and rulers 
of foreign countries as well as the distinguished 
men and women of our own land are received in 
the home of our chief executive. In the great 
East Room is a profusion of gilding, rich mirrors, 
and chandeliers. The Green Room contains the 
portraits of the presidents, and the Blue Room is 
the center of the South Colonade. Back of these 
is the State Dining Room, the scene of many 
festivities, and the Cabinet Room with its long 
table where the president meets his advisers. 

OLD DAYS AT THE WHITE HOUSE 

You may enjoy sitting in a quiet corner of the 
East Room and recalling some of the past scenes 
of the old White House. Stately dames with hoop 
skirts and curls ; courtly gentlemen in wigs, powder 
and velvet; gay young belles of a hundred years 
ago were the famous men and lovely women at 
the first White House parties. Tom Paine, the 
Colonial Bolshevik; Tom Moore, the Irish poet; 
the first Turkish minister with his elaborate head- 
dress; Gilbert Stuart, the popular portrait painter; 
the aristocratic La Fayette with his noble spirit of 
democracy; James Fenimore Cooper, the writer of 
Indian tales: a long procession might march 
before you, in your dreaming over the old 
mansion's past. 



60 Little Journeys in America 

How many interesting tableaux were presented! 
The scholarly John Adams conversing with poets, 
artists, and philosophers; the gay young Julia 
Gardiner, tossing the crimson tassel of her cap in 
President Tyler's face when he proposed to her; 
the Prince of Wales dancing with pretty Harriet 
Lane; the patient face and drooping figure of 
Lincoln at the long windows that look out over 
the Virginia hills: these are just a few of the many 
pictures. 

Dear to the heart of every American is Mount 
Vernon with its quaint formal garden, its old sun 
dial and its worn relics of our first great Com- 
mander-in-Chief. Furniture, books, and other 
intimate, personal articles recall the simple, digni- 
fied home life of George and Martha Washington. 
And down a shady pathway is the vine-covered 
tomb where the greatest as well as the least of the 
visitors at Washington may look upon the quiet 
grave of "The Father of Our Country." 

The Washington of the past is full of romantic 
memories, the Washington of the present is more 
interesting than ever in its far-reaching influence, 
and a commission of artists and builders is now 
carefully planning for the architectural appearance 
of the Washington of the future. Gardens, parks, 
and memorial fountains have been arranged for. 
A great bridge will span the Potomac, symbolizing 



Washington, the National Capital 61 

the reunion of North and South. And the new 
plans have been fashioned upon the old ; the wheel- 
like design with the Capitol at the hub, that wise, 
far-seeing plan, which Major L'Enfant and George 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 



Mount Vernon 



Washington formulated when the site for the 
national capitol was chosen away back in 1790, will 
only be carried on to the fullness of its completion. 



PITTSBURGH, THE WORLD'S WORKSHOP 

VT'OUR first view of the flaming furnaces of 
■'■ Pittsburgh should be from the east at night, 
the train sweeping for miles through a great 
gorge of dusky buildings, lighted factory windows, 
and blazing chimneys. Clouds of smoke and steam 
hang above towering black frames and stacks. 
Sparks and orange-colored tongues leap up against 
the sky. There are red and yellow rivers here 
and there, and everywhere are flashing lights and 
spots of fire and squares of flame. You are enter- 
ing the world's workshop, the iron and steel city — 
perhaps the greatest industrial center in the 
United States. 

It seems as though you might be looking into 
the mighty forges of some giant god, where strange 
and powerful monsters were being moulded out of 
earth and fire. Shadowy workmen move here and 
there before the windows, silhouetted in the red 
glare of the furnaces. They seem like busy pigmies 
in the vastness of the tall, black buildings and 
clouds of smoke and squares of light. 

If you should gain admission to one of the great 
buildings, you could see the white lakes of bubbling 
steel and the red pools of liquid iron with which a 
real, if invisible, monster does make powerful, 

62 



Pittsburgh, the World's Workshop 63 

monster machines. A sort of twin god, you and I 
might call the giant, though he is usually given 
the more prosaic name of "manufacturing" and 
"commerce." 

The workshop is a noisy, dusty place; and the 
heat from the furnaces is so intense that you may 
need a pair of blue glasses to protect your eyes if 
you venture close to the glowing, molten beds. 
The grimy, sweating workmen cringe and shield 
their faces before the scorching waves of heat. 
Wheels grind, engines rumble, a gigantic crane 
lifts its brimming ladle from a pit like the old 
torture fiends must have dreamed of. A fog of 
dust and smoke hangs about the place, casting 
queer, ghostly shadows in the midst of the fierce 
red, white, and orange lights. Men move back 
and forth in the lights and shadows, shoveling, 
pounding, and directing the hissing streams of 
metal with huge, long-handled spoons. From the 
mouths of runners the white steel cascades into 
seventy-ton ladles. A steel pourer fills tall, red 
moulds, a mould capper caps them, and puffing, 
narrow-gage locomotives drag them away. 

WHAT DO THEY MAKE IN THE WORKSHOP? 

From the mine-gouged mountains of western 
Pennsylvania, but more abundantly from the 
regions around the Great Lakes, comes the dark 



64 Little Journeys in America 

ore into the great lighted rooras for its refining. It 
is shoveled into the massive furnaces as crushed 
stone. It flows out like foaming rivers of lava. It 
is soaked and smashed and cooled into smooth, 
blue billets to supply myriads of factories and 
forges, to be made into rails and locomotives, and 
aqueduct pipes, and armor for warships, and 
telegraph wires. Thousands of articles are 
fashioned for thousands of people in America, 
Europe, Africa, and Japan. Pittsburgh mills 
turn out annually over 150,000,000 tons of steel. 

The city's supremacy as a manufacturing dis- 
trict is due to its fuel supply. Coal and coke are 
the largest items in its enormous freight tonnage. 
It leads in the production of steel cars, tin plate, 
pipe and tubing, air brakes, corks, bottles, elec- 
trical machinery, glass, white lead, and pickles. 

The brand of cigars known as stogies originated 
in Pittsburgh, and there are some 250 manu- 
factories for this article, with an annual product 
worth $4,000,000. Gas, as well as coal, is plentiful; 
and the mountains for miles around are rich in 
iron ore. Pittsburgh also has a reputation for 
making millionaires out of ambitious country 
boys who come into this teeming center of smoke 
and noise and skyscrapers, where the monsters of 
industry are born, and where the products of the 
bleached, blistered men in the red-windowed 
factories go out to all quarters of the globe. 



Pittsburgh, the World's Workshop 65 

A GATEWAY IN THE MOUNTAINS 

With all its factories, Pittsburgh is still as great 
a gateway as it was in its colonial beginnings — a 
much greater gateway, in fact, with its network 
of railroads as well as its three rivers and eight 
lake ports. The advantages of communication with 
the world as well as its vast fuel supply have helped 
to build up the enormous factories. 

The importance of the mountain gap where the 
Monongohela and Allegheny rivers meet to form 
the Ohio, was recognized by Major George Wash- 
ington when he visited the place in 1753 on his 
memorable journey through the wilderness. His 
report states that he "spent some time in viewing 
the rivers and land in the fork which I think 
extremely well situated for a fort, as it has absolute 
command on both rivers." 

Today the yellow, brown rivers are thick with 
barges, and the railroads are lined with freight 
cars. It is said that the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie 
earns more clear profit to the mile than any other 
railroad in the world. Although Pittsburgh is not 
an ocean city the tonnage of her boats has been 
greater than that of any seaport. Because so 
many Pittsburgh men live outside, away from the 
smoke and grime, the city has a tremendous sub- 
urban train service. 

Much has been done to remedy the smoke 



66 Little Journeys in America 

nuisance, though the problem of a clean city is a 
difficult one, with miles of chimneys belching 
grimy flames night and day. The skyscrapers 
darken the narrow streets of the busiest sections, 
and windows are artificially lighted at mid-day 
under the leaden clouds. 

Back of the canyons of buildings the actual 
mountains rise with houses perched dizzily on their 
tops, the railroads climbing their steep sides. 
Huge trolley cars mount the great hills within the 
city, dragging mammouth trailers at the rush 
hours. 

Thousands of foreigners inhabit the slums of 
Pittsburgh. You may visit a single block where 
thirteen different languages are spoken. The men 
work by day or night in the grimy factories; and 
they live in the ugly, miserable hovels which a 
greater Pittsburgh will have to get rid of. Some of 
them read books in the long shifts, better books, 
we are told, than American workmen of the same 
class would think of reading. Eventually some 
of them become iron masters, gathering in the 
wealth which drips from the black mines and the 

red furnaces. 

« 

ANOTHER SIDE 

You may find, of course, another Pittsburgh, 
somewhat away from the smoke and noise and 



Pittsburgh, the World's Workshop 67 

glare of giant workshops. Even iron masters are 
frequently fond of books and parks and picture 
galleries. Like other people, they enjoy theaters 
and concerts. One of these was the shrewd old 
Scotchman, who was known as the Pittsburgh steel 
king long before his name was seen on gray stone 
libraries all over the country. Andrew Carnegie 
was one of the poor boys who came to Pittsburgh 
to be made into a millionaire. With a little group 
of fellow Scotchmen he proved that steel could be 
an economic building material. The scarcity of 
wood and the growing popularity of skyscrapers 
helped to make this a very significant discovery. 

So the city has its great Carnegie Library and 
Institute with a museum, music hall, art gallery, 
and an endowment of $2,000,000. Forbes Field 
is the greatest baseball park in America, which of 
course means the greatest anywhere. Five bridges 
cross the Monongohela and eight, the Allegheny. 

In Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, Homewood, and 
other suburban places there are costly homes; 
and hundreds of suburban trains carry business 
men to and from the twilight of narrow streets 
and tall chimneys. More than four hundred of 
these trains arrive and depart every day from a 
single Pittsburgh terminal. The city has absorbed 
Allegheny and other surrounding burroughs. 

If you could have visited the city in the early 



68 Little Journeys in America 

years of its history, you would have found the 
little village at the forks of the Ohio a center even 
then for boats and barges. It was a landmark 
for Indian traders in the first half of the eighteenth 
century. To this gateway of the West came the 
old Scotch and English pioneers, bound for the 
great wilderness of the Ohio Valley; and Pittsburgh 
began to be a frontier town. Before this it had 
been the Fort Duquesne of the French, and then 
Fort Pitt of the English. 

Following Washington's advice, the English 
started to erect a stockade here in 1754. But the 
French came down from Canada, took the place 
and built Fort Duquesne. Then the English took 
the fort and built the historic old post named for 
William Pitt, the English prime minister and the 
friend of the American colonies. Shortly after 
the battle of Lexington, the pioneers of this region 
declared their allegiance to the colonies and the 
cause of Independence, and took possession of 
Fort Pitt. Indian ravages harassed the country 
for ten years; and then General "Mad Anthony" 
Wayne, the dashing old frontiersman, was sent 
against the Ohio tribes and drove them from the 
territory. 

The gateway then became a safe passage for 
boats bearing cargoes down the two rivers to the 
Ohio, and from there to the Mississippi and the 



Pittsburgh, the World's Workshop 69 

Gulf. Here the boats rested on the return trip 
with goods from Louisiana. Many old soldiers of 
the Revolution passed this way to the new *'land 
of promise," the great Western Reserve. High- 
ways and finally railroads took the place of the 
old Indian trails, and a fresh flood of traffic 
patrolled the three rivers. The city at the river 
forks began to give promise of its present com- 
mercial greatness. 

COAL FOR THE FURNACES 

With the discovery of coal and iron came a 
second and more significant stage of growth. And 
there were forests with which to build ships and 
freight cars. The gateway not only passed the 
boats on. It began to fill them with products of 
its own mines and factories. Iron for making steel 
and the multitude of manufactured articles; coal 
and gas to feed the furnaces ; oil for lighting and for 
gasoline; beds of clay and sand for making bricks 
and glass: these are materials which Pittsburgh 
found at her front door or her back door. They 
supplied her workshops and filled her freight trains 
and barges. 

These riches had long been overlooked by 
travelers along the old Braddock Road, where the 
pompous British general got his first lesson in 
Indian warfare. People had been anxious to pass 



70 Little Journeys in America 

on to the rich lands beyond the mountains and had 
not dreamed of the possibihties in the rugged, 
rocky slopes. But at last the forests and mines 
began to be appreciated; and Pittsburgh became 
the "smoky city," the blazing forge for the hammer 
strokes of the great god of industry. 

Schenley Park is a splendid possession and the 
site of one of the few great civic centers of America. 
Around Carnegie Institute are the Soldiers' 
Memorial Hall, the Masonic Temple, the Pitts- 
burgh Athletic Association Building, the Home for 
the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, 
the Eighteenth Regiment Armory, the Schenley 
High School, and the fine buildings of the Univer- 
sity of Pittsburgh. There are also the Pennsylvania 
College for Women and other educational insti- 
tutions, including good public schools. 

Something of the old Scotch Presbyterian spirit 
of pioneer days survives in a wholesome sense 
of civic morality. Pittsburgh has hundreds of 
churches and thousands of beautiful homes in 
the remote residence parts. 



BALTIMORE, THE MONUMENTAL 
CITY 

JT may be the brick houses with the white 
'^ marble steps, or the elegant shops along dreamy- 
old Charles Street, or possibly the benign figure of 
Washington aloft on the pedestal in Mount Vernon 
Square. You are not sure what it is, but some- 
thing about Baltimore makes you think of comfort- 
able family dinners and quiet afternoon teas. 

If you have heard of Baltimore as the "Monu- 
mental City," you may wonder upon your first 
visit, at the reason for the name. But when you 
reach Mount Vernon Place in the midst of digni- 
fied Charles Street, you discover a beautiful white 
marble column with a heroic statue of Washington 
at the top. This is the oldest of many monuments 
erected to honor our first president; and it was 
because of this and the "Battle Monument" that 
the city received its epithet, and not because 
of the great number of monuments in Baltimore. 

The stately Washington shaft towers nearly 
two hundred feet from a base fifty feet square, 
and seems to dominate the city with its lofty 
calm. By a winding stair inside you may climb to 
the parapet at the top and gain a fine view out 
over the city, the Patapsco River on which Balti- 

71 



72 Little Journeys in America 

more is situated, and the waters of the Chesapeake 
Bay fourteen miles distant. 

In the square which surrounds the monument 
you find bronze figures representing Peace, War, 
Force, and Order. There is a statue of George 
Peabody and of several other distinguished men. 
Not far away is the Walters Art Gallery, with 
notable French paintings, Chinese and Japanese 
bronzes, and rare ivory carvings and porcelains. 
At the southeast corner of Washington Place is 
Peabody Institute with its conservatory of music, 
its library and galleries. 

YOU FIND POE'S GRAVE 

If you follow Charles Street south for some 
half-dozen blocks and then turn east to Monu- 
ment Square near the Post Ofiice, you come upon 
the white marble memorial erected in honor of 
men who died defending the city in 1814. A 
great bundle of Roman fasces containing the 
names of those who fell makes the shaft of the 
"Battle Monument"; and this is mounted by a 
female figure. 

In the churchyard in which he lies buried, you 
will find a small monument to the memory of 
Edgar Allen Poe. And you remember that it was 
through the streets of Baltimore that the unhappy 
poet and story-writer wandered often; and here, 



Baltimore, the Monumental City 73 

no doubt, that he gathered material for some 
of his most thrilHng tales. 

To you or me old Charles Street looks very- 
sedate and not particularly adventurous, but Poe 
might easily have peopled it with mysterious 
demons. There are crooked, narrow streets down 
about Jones Falls, which require less imagination 
for purposes of gruesome story-telling. This is 
"Old Town." Here you find rambling byways, 
crowded alleys, dingy gutters, and cluttered court 
yards. Poe must have reveled in some of the 
shadowy corners of "Old Town." 

You pass old-fashioned, red brick houses which 
may have been young in George Washington's 
day. On some of these narrow streets there are 
ancient inns that knew the excitement of noisy 
stage-coach arrivals in the quaint old Colonial 
times. Up lumbered the mud-splashed vehicles 
with much clattering of hoofs and cracking of 
whips. And perhaps a lovely young lady from 
Richmond stepped daintily out of an old coach 
door, followed by a fat colored "Mammy" puffing 
under bags and bandboxes. 

Wigged and powdered Colonial gentlemen; gay 
young adventurers from London or Paris; sturdy 
frontiersmen in coonskin caps, keen-faced Yankees ; 
stately, hoop-skirted dames: they all tumbled out 
of the rocking old coaches and went in to dine 



74 Little Journeys in America 

at the queer little inns. And there were many 
stories told of the recklessness of drivers, or the 
slowness of horses, or the speed of certain fleet- 
footed pairs. Always there w^ere some record- 
breaking sprints, often masked robbers along some 
lonely highway, \\liat a start it would have given 
these ancient stage-coachers if a visitor could have 
dropped in by motor or airplane ! 

THE HARBOR AND FORT McHENRY 

You rather enjoy the narrow, rambling streets of 
Old Town. There are no rickety tenements, and 
the little brick houses seem very solid and cozy. 

Down along the wharves are crab and oyster 
stalls where singing negroes prepare the delectable 
sea food for market. Across the harbor you may 
see Fort McHenry, silently watchful above the 
busy streets. It was this fort which, in 1814 
defended Baltimore from the British attack. It 
was during the action that Francis Scott Key, 
being detained on one of the British ships, 
composed the "Star Spangled Banner," which has 
stirred millions of iVmericans and has become 
much more famous than the battle which inspired it. 

Baltimore's harbor is in the heart of the city, 
and a very good harbor it is, accommodating vessels 
of the largest class and carrying on extensive 
commerce. Here are wharves of the Baltimore and 



Baltimore, the Monumental City 75 

Ohio, the first successful railroad system in this 
country. And there are many tall elevators and 
warehouses. 

WHAT DO THE STEAMERS CARRY? 

The many steamers which you see about the 
piers carry a great deal of corn, shipped here from 
interior cities, and also wheat, flour, cotton, tobacco, 
and coal. In return for these exports they bring 
to Baltimore iron ore, bananas, pineapples, cocoa- 
nuts, sugar, and general merchandise. 

If you wish to find out what is made in Balti- 
more, you may visit an extensive Cooper refining 
plant and large oyster and fruit canneries. You 
will find, also, factories making fertilizers, straw 
goods, and cotton duck. In the neighborhood 
of Baltimore is found the finest brick-clay in the 
world, and more than a hundred million bricks are 
manufactured annually in the city. 

Her good harbor and nearness to cotton and 
grain regions, as well as her wood, coal and iron 
wealth, have helped to make Baltimore a great 
seaport. 

Following Charles Street north, you come to the 
handsome residences of the city. Many of the 
broad streets of new Baltimore have pretty 
squares with flowers, grass and splashing fountains. 
Maryland marble has been used with good effect in 



76 Little Journeys in America 

fine public buildings. The City Hall is of white 
marble with a dome 227 feet high. The Court 
House and Post Office are other imposing structures 
in this row, which escaped the fire that, in 1904, 
wiped out much of the business section. The 
general impression of Baltimore's business streets 
is that of age and stability. 

Johns Hopkins University is the most dis- 
tinguished of a group of first-class educational 
institutions. An ancient cathedral lifts its dome 
among the trees ; and there are other great churches, 
theaters, and modern hotels. 

OF THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH 

Named after Lord Baltimore who settled Mary- 
land in 1633, the city seemed allied to the aristo- 
cratic ideals of the Virginia colonies. Yet, along 
with Maryland, it had many interests in common 
with its northern neighbors. Baltimore was 
founded in 1729, after the early broils of Puritans 
and Cavaliers had been mainly adjusted. Chris- 
tians of all sects were allowed to worship in the 
Maryland colony, and the different religious 
beliefs were happily adjusted. 

At the time of the Civil War there were again 
the bitter contests of a border state; and when a 
Massachusetts regiment, passing through the 
streets of Baltimore was fired upon by a mob. 



Baltimore, the Monumental City 77 

the city was placed under Federal control. It 
took the famous Mason and Dixon line to sepa- 
rate slave and free states and mark the northern 
boundary of Maryland. 

But if Baltimore has realized the difficulties of 
her position, she is now able to demonstrate its 
advantages. The climate is temperate and bracing, 
neither too hot nor too cold. Divided into two 
nearly equal parts by the stream known as Jones' 
Falls, the city seems plentifully watered and fresh 
with the breezes of a tempered sea. While Wash- 
ington, only thirty-seven miles away, is sweltering 
through the summer, half depopulated by the 
rush to cooler climes, one finds the streets of 
Baltimore delightfully comfortable for the most 
part. 

The spirit of the South is seen, too, in charming 
gardens and parks. Winter touches them lightly, 
and summer blooms in them with fragrant aban- 
don. You should walk or drive through Druid 
Park, with its seven hundred acres of wooded hill 
slopes, grassy terraces, and flowery beauty. There 
is another memorial here in honor of Poe, and you 
are glad that this dignified old city has seen fit to 
recognize the great gifts of one of her unhappy 
sons. Druid Park is cool with the shade of oaks 
and the green of many vines. It seems a fit place 
to recall a poet's sad enchantment. 



78 Little Journeys in America 

The same air of calm enjoyment pervades 
old shops and homes along Charles Street. Stores 
are tempting, without seeming too openly com- 
mercial. Clubs are hospitable; friends have time 
for leisurely gossip on cool front porches. 

The markets of Baltimore have long been 
celebrated. Here are gathered the richness of 
southern fruits, the piles of glistening sea food, 
the stores of out-lying vegetable gardens. Even 
the names of Baltimore's streets seem somehow 
mildly romantic, like her red brick houses. "Sarah 
Ann Street," "Johnny-cake Road," "Maiden- 
choice Lane," and similar names are as humanly 
suggestive as the quaint front porches and after- 
noon tea. 

The city seems to have kept its southern open- 
heartedness and leisure, without losing a certain 
red-brick thriftness and substantiality, recalling 
Philadelphia or New England. Its markets are 
notoriously inexpensive even in high-cost-of -living 
days. It has taken its place industrially without 
blackening itself with the obscuring smudge of 
commercialism. Something of pioneer dignity and 
romance lingers for General Washington on his 
lofty pedestal to look down on through the years. 

BY THE OLD CANAL 

If you have^time^to leave Baltimore by way of 
the ancient canal through which boats still pass to 



Baltimore, the Monumental City 79 

Philadelphia, you will keep this impression of 
leisurely poise which we have discovered in the 
Monumental City. A little steamer carries you 
slowly but surely in a northeasternly direction, a 
hundred miles in a day's journey. 

Green banks, placid waters, country roads, and 
distant hills are about you. You meet huge barges, 
sometimes drawn by horses that travel the narrow 
"towpath." Swinging bridges open above your 
head; motor boats chug beside you. And the 
gleaming monument and the tall chimneys of Balti- 
more fade slowly from your view. 



PHILADELPHIA, THE BIRTHPLACE OF 
LIBERTY 

^ 'rilHE Birthplace of American Liberty," the 
-*■ "Quaker City," and the "Red City" are 
titles applied to Philadelphia, aside from its real 
name, which means "City of Brotherly Love." 
And it has been so closely associated with two great 
statesmen, that when thinking of it historically 
one feels like calling it the city of Benjamin Frank- 
lin and William Penn. 

But as the birthplace of American Liberty it is 
perhaps most interesting to visitors. And we 
imagine that both Penn and Franklin would have 
been delighted with the name. As you enter 
Philadelphia, you may catch sight of Penn, in 
Quaker dress, standing on a great pedestal above 
the red brick buildings. 

On your first trip to Philadelphia you must of 
course see Independence Hall and the old bell 
which "proclaimed liberty throughout the land" 
so many years ago. Facing the lawns and flowers 
of Independence Square, the ancient brick state- 
house stands sturdily among its sheltering trees. It 
is two stories high and is simply constructed. 

In the east room on the first floor you may sit in 
one of the chairs which were occupied by the mem- 

80 



Philadelphia, Birthplace of Liberty 81 

bers of the Revolutionary Congress. Here the 
Declaration of Independence was adopted, July 
4, 1776. The old furniture is arranged about the 
room as it was at that memorable time. On the 
walls are portraits of the signers of the Declaration. 
And there are ancient banners and emblems. 
"Don't tread on me," shrieks one of the faded 
"Rattlesnake flags," as defiantly as ever. 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Room in Independence Hall Where Declaration of Independence 
Was Signed 

In the upper hall Washington delivered his Fare- 
well Address. You may remember one of his fam- 
ous sentences: "My eyes have grown dim in the 
service of my country, but I have never doubted 
her justice." In the main corridor you find the old 



82 Little Journeys in America 

cracked bell, which has made many journeys to 
world's fairs since it rang the glad tidings of 
^'liberty." 

You return to the sunshine and flower-beds of 
Independence Square. There are other interesting 
buildings all about you. The City Hall with its 
tower from which William Penn looks down upon 
his Quaker City is near at hand. This hall was for 
many years the meeting place of the first United 
States Court. A neighboring building is the Hall 
of the American Philosophical Society, an organiza- 
tion founded by Benjamin Franklin. Near here is 
Congress Hall, the meeting place of our national 
Congress before the Capitol was established at 
Washington. 

WHERE WAS THE FIRST FLAG MADE? 

You must not miss the Betsy Ross House on 
Arch Street, not far from the Delaware river. It 
is a quaint little two-story brick, wedged in between 
two larger buildings. It has a sloping roof with 
dormer windows, and the windows have tiny panes 
and heavy wooden shutters. There is a picture of 
the first flag, like a sign board, at the corner of an 
upper window. There were thirteen stars and 
thirteen stripes on this early "edition" of "Old 
Glory." 

On Arch Street, also, is the graveyard of Christ 



Philadelphia, Birthplace of Liberty 83 



Church, and an iron grating in the old brick wall 
allows you to look through upon the graves of 
Benjamin Franklin and his wife. The place is 
marked with a simple slab in keeping with the spirit 
of this great democrat. The inscription says, 
"Benjamin and Deborah Franklin, 1790." 

There is a bronze statue of Franklin in front of 
the Post Office build- 
ing on Chestnut 
Street. It was in 
Philadelphia, you re- 
member, that Frank- 
lin made his appear- 
ance, eating a break- 
fast roll and carrying 
his extra clothes 
wrapped up in a cotton 
handkerchief. It was 
here that his future 
wife smiled from the 
door of her father's 
house at the boy's awkward appearance. Frank- 
lin was then eighteen years old and had left 
Boston and his brother's printing house to try his 
fortunes alone in a strange city. 

You travel further along Chestnut Street and 
discover the hall where the first Colonial Congress 
met in 1774. An inscription reads, 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 



Betsy Ross House, 
Birthplace of Old Glory 



84 Little Journeys in America 

"Within these walls, Henry, Hancock and 
Adams inspired the delegates of the colo- 
nies with nerve and sinew for the toils of 
war." 
You are finding many halls in Philadelphia, but 
they were probably all very necessary in the "birth- 
place of liberty." In the older parts of the city are 
many other landmarks. You enjoy discovering 
them as you walk along. The modern business of 
the city surges about the historic spots. You need 
to watch or you will miss some of them in the 
rushing commerce of the practical Red City. 

RED BRICKS AND "BUSY-BODIES" 

There seems to be endless rows and rows of two- 
story and three-story bricks, most of them individ- 
ual houses. There are some apartment buildings, 
but many more rows of single dwellings. This 
seems natural. You would expect a Quaker to 
want a house of his own. And Quaker influence is 
still felt in Philadelphia. 

Did you ever hear of a busy-body? Not a 
gossiping old lady, if you please, but a strange little 
device which you may notice on the window ledge 
of almost any of these red brick houses. Two or 
three mirrors are placed in such a way that anyone 
sitting near the window may see the reflection of 
the street below. They must be curious folk, one 



Philadelphia, Birthplace of Liberty 85 

imagines, to want these saucy "busy-bodies," for- 
ever spying on what takes place outside the win- 
dow. In spite of their demure and dignified looks, 
the Quakers must have been as curious as anybody 
about the doings of their neighbors. 

Chestnut Street, by the way, is an aristocratic 
thoroughfare. It has been compared to New 
York's Fifth Avenue. Here are small shops filled 
with choice and expensive articles. Here you may 
buy old books or exquisite china or laces. Other 
shops offer luxurious clothing and jewelry. And 
there are tea rooms and elegant hotels, and after 
these come handsome residences. 

AN INTERESTING BOY'S SCHOOL 

Beyond the red brick houses there are attractive 
suburbs. Fairmount Park is a splendid pleasure 
ground of about 3,000 acres, with the Schuylkill 
River flowing through it. Here exciting boat races 
attract thousands of visitors. There are lovely 
drives beside the river and along wooded hilltops. 
You notice a colossal equestrian statue of Washing- 
ton, also one of Grant and a bronze statue of 
Lincoln. In the west part of this park the Centen- 
nial Exposition was held in 1876. Horticultural 
Hall and the Memorial Art Gallery are buildings 
which were erected at the time of this first "World's 
Fair" in America. 



86 Little Journeys in America 



Near the west park entrance you find "Letitia 
House," the original residence of WilHam Penn, 
moved here from its old site in the crowded city. 

You may follow a 
narrow footpath 
along the Wissahickon 
to one of the most 
picturesque of wooded 
glens. 

The University of 
Pennsylvania is a 
great institution on 
the west bank of the 
Schuylkill. You find 
near here a beautiful 
Greek Temple at the 
center of a group of 
buildings belonging to Girard College. This school 
was founded for the education of poor boys, by 
Stephen Girard, one of Philadelphia's richest men. 
Its founder was a stern, reserved man; and he 
imposed the strange decree that no clergyman 
should be allowed to enter even the grounds of the 
institution. This provision has been respected. Un- 
less you can prove conclusively that you are not a 
preacher of any sort, you will not be allowed to set 
foot in the grounds or buildings. Girard College 
is a splendid charity school, paying the entire ex- 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Home of William Penn 



Philadelphia, Birthplace of Liberty 87 

penses of the boys who are taken. Boys are 
entered at the age of eight years and may remain 
until they are eighteen. 

A CITY OF FACTORIES 

You should not forget that Philadelphia claims 
the largest locomotive factory in the world. You 
would enjoy a visit to the Baldwin Locomotive 
Works. The principal manufacturing plant covers 
seventeen acres, and there are extensive shops and 
foundries outside the city. The industry was 
founded in 1831. Baldwin locomotives are now 
sent all over the world at the rate of about 2,500 
every year. 

There is an immense ship-building industry in 
Philadelphia, and large cotton and carpet mills. 
The city's nearness to great coal fields has done 
much to aid the growth of her giant factories. She 
also has good transportation by water and by land. 

You may be interested in the handsome publish- 
ing house of the Curtis Company on Independence 
Square. This is the one great magazine office in 
this home of the first American newspaper and the 
first magazine. 

YOU LEAVE ALONG THE PIKE 

An interesting way to depart from Philadelphia 
is along one of her famous old pikes. Beyond the 



88 Little Journeys in America 

factory chimneys and the soHd rows of brick houses 
you may journey toward old-fashioned farm homes 
and quaint churches where Httle companies of 
elderly people still attend "Quaker Meeting." 

Should you care to peep into one of these meeting 
houses you will notice that there is no pulpit, only 
rows of benches sitting quite solemnly side by side. 
You can imagine them filled with quaint, gray-clad 
worshippers sitting quietly in the simple room, 
women on one side and the men on the other. 
These people knew the magic of silence, an almost 
forgotten charm, it would seem in our noisy modern 
habits of life. 

Along this old pike there are also delightful inns, 
most of them with yellow walls, green blinds, and 
historic traditions. Here Washington dined with 
other colonial celebrities. Here the members of the 
Continental Congress stopped for the night when 
on their way to the new national assembly hall at 
Washington. 

You pass ancient toll gates with ancient keepers, 
large white farm houses, sturdy orchards and vine- 
yards. If you can arrange your departure so as to 
pass through Valley Forge it seems a logical leave- 
taking of Philadelphia. 

THE OLD CAMP GROUND 

About twenty miles northwest of the city is the 
little ravine in which Washington and his half- 



Philadelphia, Birthplace of Liberty 89 

starved, half-clothed army spent the terrible 
winter of 1777-78. There was an old forge here, in 
the very early days, which gave the valley its name. 
There was also a mill and the stone house in which 
Washington made his headquarters. You may 
visit the old house, and some army huts, repro- 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Washington Inn, Valley Forge 

duced to show visitors in what sort of quarters the 
patriots wintered. They are rude cabins, cheerless 
enough without the added discomforts of insuf- 
ficient food and clothing. 

Washington's bitter reports remind us of the 



90 Little Journeys in America 

sufferings of those days. On December 23, he said 
that 2000 men were barefoot or otherwise unfit for 
duty. By February there were nearly 4000 unfit 
for service. By "an eternal round of the most 
stupid mismanagement," Washington declared, 
*'the public treasury is expended to no kind of pur- 
pose, while men have been left to perish by inches 
with cold and nakedness." 

There were smallpox and other diseases among 
the soldiers. Scarcity of blankets compelled num- 
bers of them to sit up all night, hovering over 
campfires. When we remember these disheartening 
conditions. Valley Forge seems a kind of national 
altar of sacrifice. 

The old camping ground is now a state park. 
Red squirrels and bluebirds are plentiful, and the 
trees droop gracefully over the water where the 
old forge and the old mill once stood. There are 
covered wooden bridges over the "Valley Creek." 
In winter snow lies deep along the paths and road- 
ways and clings in feathery handfuls among the 
brushy woods. Boy Scouts are fond of meeting 
here, and in summer there are thousands of visitors. 



THE WESTERN RESERVE 

TOURNEYING westward from the Atlantic 
^ coast through Virginia, you may cross the 
famous Natural Bridge on your way to the 
mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee and the 
fertile Ohio Valley, which was wild frontier country 
in the days of Daniel Boone. Tall trees grow under 
the arch of the great bridge, but they do not reach 
its roof. 

You may want to climb the precipice that towers 
steep and rugged above the gurgling little Cedar 
Brook, supporting the arch of rock with its broad 
wagon road above. Many people have climbed the 
wall and cut their names in the limestone. Up 
about twenty -five feet is the name of Washington. 
For many years this was the highest name. Finally, 
somebody climbed the whole 215 feet to the top. 

Beyond the Natural Bridge you come to the 
leafy, flower-bordered canyons of Eastern Ken- 
tucky. "Kentucky is the greenest, leafiest state I 
have yet seen," said John Muir in a book of notes 
about his long walk from Wisconsin to the Gulf of 
Mexico. 

You will notice the density of foliage which 
makes each mountain-side a wall of green. Your 
train winds through the Cumberlands, over dashing 

91 



92 Little Journeys in America 

streams, around massive shoulders of rock, past 
ancient-looking cabins perched beside a patch of 
corn or a forlorn bit of "clearing." You may catch 
sight of shy barefooted children, slipping nimbly 
among the rocks and trees. 

HOW DO THE MOUNTAINEERS LIVE? 

Lonely mountain roads lead away through the 
dense woods to other faded gray houses of rough 
boards or round logs. These homes of the Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee mountaineers are strangely 
primitive in the midst of a long-settled country. 
You might easily imagine one of them to be the 
frontier cabin of Daniel Boone, where the dauntless 
pioneer roasted his piece of venison before an open 
fire and rolled into his bunk of skins after carefully 
barring the door against the attacks of wild beasts. 
You see only scampering fox squirrels or cawing 
crows, with now and then a bluejay, a red-headed 
woodpecker, or if you are especially fortunate, a 
beautiful Kentucky cardinal. 

\ Many of the mountaineers still live in the primi- 
tive fashion of the earliest settlers. In dilapidated 
lumber wagons drawn by miserable looking mules 
or^ horses, the mountain farmers drive with their 
families to a distant "settlement" or to Sunday 
services in a country schoolhouse. Sometimes the 
women sit on kitchen chairs placed in the back of 



The Western Reserve 93 

the wagon box, and these seats slip up and down in 
a most alarming fashion as the crude vehicle jolts 
over the steep and stony mountain roads. 

Water is often carried from a spring a half a mile 
or more from the house. Old women smoke corn- 
cob pipes and take snuff. A few of them spin and 
weave; but calico and jeans have taken the place, 
in a large measure, of the more substantial home- 
spun materials. 

Old folk-songs and stories are handed down from 
parents to children in these remote country dis- 
tricts. Some very charming ballads have been 
preserved in this way. But the mountaineers are 
slowly changing. "Moonlight schools" held in the 
evenings did much to start these people to thinking 
more of the outside world. The schools were at 
first held only on moonlight nights, as then the 
pupils could find their way over the steep mountain 
paths to the schoolhouse or settlement. Old men 
and women who had never learned to read became 
interested in these night classes. 

The mountaineers have many interesting and 
admirable characteristics, in spite of their shiftless 
way of living. They are very loyal to anyone who 
befriends them, and their devotion to blood rela- 
tives was one of the causes for the terrible feuds 
which you have read of in stories of the Kentucky 
and Tennessee mountains. 



94 Little Journeys in America 

WHERE IS MAMMOTH CAVE? 

The mountain country is so beautiful it seems as 
if people ought to be happy living in it. Soft white 
clouds fluff over the green ridges. The sky is a 
soft, warm blue above the lofty treetops. Oaks, 
hickories, sycamore, and a great variety of other 
trees are found. 

In autumn the woods are a blaze of color. Frost 
glistens on the red and gold leaves that flutter down 
to form a brown carpet. Bitter-sweet and dog- 
wood berries flame in the cool shadows, and there 
are wild grape vines and red haws and waxy mistle- 
toe. Astors and goldenrod border the purple forest 
paths, and brooks leap clear and silvery through 
rocky ravines. 

"The Cumberland must be a happy stream," 
said John Muir, 'T think I could enjoy traveling 
with it in the midst of such beauty all my life." 

Ninety miles south of Louisville you find Mam- 
moth Cave. This cave is about ten miles in 
length and is the largest cavern known. You fol- 
low a narrow ravine to the funnel-shaped mouth 
with its fringe of green fern. A strong cool wind 
comes out of the opening, and is known as the 
"breath" of the cave. People sit about the door- 
way on hot summer days and are fanned by the 
current of pure air which has been cooled in the 
dripping depth of the great dark chambers. 



The Western Reserve 95 

You would travel over 150 miles if you explored 
all the avenues, chambers, rivers, and cataracts 
within this cave. There are vast domes, lakes, 
abysses, and grotesque shapes of rock. Bats 
squeak and circle about the lofty walls as you enter. 
Moisture drips from the dank ceilings. 

The chief temple covers about four acres and 
has a dome of solid rock 120 feet high. In the Star 
Chamber there are glistening white points in the 
dark lofty ceiling that look like stars in the glim- 
mering electric light. The river Styx is 450 feet 
long and is crossed by a natural bridge thirty feet 
high. 

You have a strange feeling, half dread and half 
delight, in this mysterious under-world. White, 
eyeless fish glide about in the pools or streams. 
And there are lizards, frogs, and crickets who some- 
times get out for a glimpse of sunlight. 

In the Bridal Chamber you are told the story of 
an ingenious maiden who had promised at her 
mother's death-bed that she would not marry any 
man on the face of the earth. She came to the dim 
cave chamber and was wedded, underground. 

The cave is interesting and mysterious, but you 
are rather glad to follow your guide back to the 
sunlight and the rocky path which leads to the 
hotel. Geologists estimate that there are about a 
hundred thousand miles of open caverns beneath 



96 Little Journeys in America 

the surface of limestone which covers this part of 
Kentucky. 

IN THE BLUE GRASS COUNTRY 

In western Kentucky you pass through the 
famous Blue Grass region. Large, comfortable 
farmhouses and broad fields of tobacco, hemp, and 
corn are a striking contrast to the poor weather- 
beaten cabins and straggling garden patches of the 
mountaineers. Here are fine orchards, rolling 
pasture lands, fat cattle and sheep, and splendid 
thoroughbred horses. 

The blue grass waves in a rippling gray-green 
curtain over hills and along driveways. It is trim 
and velvety in well-kept lawns. It is said that the 
sleek-coated, fine-limbed Kentucky horses lose 
many points of excellence when they are kept for a 
few generations away from their famous blue 
grass pastures. 

Western Kentucky is a prosperous, easy-going 
spot. Great stone houses stand on rich old estates, 
with negro cabins that were built "fo' de wah." 
Some of the slaves came back to their masters and 
the comfortable cabins, and worked on as if there 
had been no war. The Kentucky slave-holder had 
a reputation for being kind to his black folk. 

He had a reputation also for lavish hospitality 
and his children have kept this spirit of friendliness 



The Western Reserve 97 

and sociability. "Be sure to come to our house 
when you visit Kentucky," says the cordial Ken- 
tuckian you meet in New York or London or San 
Francisco. And there is something about the 
warmth of the southern accent which makes you 
eager to accept the informal invitation. 

Kentucky also has a reputation for beautiful 
women and tall, well-built men. She did have 
unpleasant fame as a place where frequent quarrels 
were settled with pistols and bowie knives, but she 
has outgrown this uncomplimentary record. 

ALONG THE OHIO 

The Ohio River winds busily back and forth 
through limestone banks, over beds of slippery soap- 
stone, and along sandy bottoms. Before the days 
of railroads it offered direct communication with 
the older settlements east of the mountains around 
Pittsburgh. And it led on to the Mississippi and the 
French settlements at the Gulf. So the first homes 
in this section of "Western Reserve" states were 
made along the Ohio or northward on the Great 
Lakes with their friendly water routes. Later, 
more adventurous pioneers struck into the prairie 
lands to the west and north. 

The Ohio Valley is a mild, sheltered region, with 
peach orchards, apple orchards, and grapes and 
"small fruit." In southern Ohio there are many 



98 Little Journeys in America 

fields of tobacco. You may watch it being stripped 
from the coarse main stems of the leaves, or you 
may see it drying in open sheds where it has been 
strung in long brown rows. Some corn, wheat or 
other grain is raised on the more fertile hills or 
along the valleys. 

You should really stop for a leisurely ride along 
one of the old country "Pikes" of Ohio. You pass, 
on one of these long white ways, infrequent toll- 
gates, where a small fee is charged for the up-keep 
of the roadbed of pounded limestone. A sleepy old 
man tends the gate ; or it may be left to the care of 
a keeper's wife, who dashes out from her kitchen 
labors as your buggy is seen to approach. Having 
paid your toll, you pass on through green meadows, 
up and down steep hills, and perhaps through a 
shadowy covered bridge — a favorite haunt for 
robbers in the early days, you are told with a kind 
of delicious shudder. 

You pass farm houses and peach orchards and 
drowsy old country churchyards with their moss- 
grown tombstones and myrtle-covered mounds. 
Along the Pike are little "string-towns," a line of 
houses on either side of the narrow road. The Pike 
is the only street in town; but the houses are all 
huddled against it with the tiniest of front yards, 
or none at all. And they are stooped, weather- 
beaten houses with picket fences at the side and 



The Western Eeserve 99 

back. They look somehow like staid, angular 
maiden ladies as they huddle along the street in a 
stiff, dingy row. 

Women with white aprons and stiffly-starched 
sun-bonnets walk primly down the one street to the 
one store where the post office is kept. Or they 
work among the zenias and four-o'clocks in the 
back gardens, or stop for a bit of gossip at a neigh- 
bor's front gate. 

The weeds may wave from between the boards of 
the narrow side-walks, and you may look from the 
back porches into a farmer's cornfield or cow- 
pasture; but Stringtown people feel the dignity of 
their town, for all that. They speak with an air 
of "going to the country" for a vacation. 

But the Pike is an entertaining thoroughfare. 
You feel a kind of drowsy content in the old- 
fashioned farm houses, the grape arbors, the bee 
hives, the peach and apple orchards, and the cool 
spring-houses where butter and milk are kept. 

PROSPEROUS CITIES 

In the cities of this section you find less of the 
spirit of dreamy content which marks the villages 
along the pikes. Indianapolis you may have met in 
Booth Tarkington's stories, or in the poems of 
James Whitcomb Riley. It has shaded streets, 
home-like old houses, and some very handsome 



100 Little Journeys in America 

new ones, and more leisurely manners than you 
find in Chicago or Pittsburgh. 

Cincinnati is rather a stirring place with five 
bridges across the Ohio and a variety of handsome 
buildings. It packs pork and manufactures cloth- 
ing, food products, iron, soap, jewelry, and drugs. 
It calls itself the "Queen City of the West." 
Columbus, Ohio, is a dignified old town with an 
air of substantial self-respect. 

Cleveland has forged ahead recently on account 
of her growing lake trade. She manufactures a 
big steamer in ninety days or less and the Cuya- 
hoga river makes a good harbor for boats. Coal is 
carried to Duluth and Superior; and the return 
cargo of red iron ore is taken to Cleveland or other 
lake ports or is passed over to Pittsburgh, the great 
steel city. 

Cleveland has broad streets, grimy old houses, 
prosperous stores, and a splendid civic center. She 
has a brisk spirit of industry, that seems to surprise 
even herself at times. 



CLEVELAND, THE FOREST CITY 

"OESIDE the blue waters of Lake Erie and the 
'^ wooded ravines of the crooked Httle Cuyahoga 
River, you find Cleveland, the largest city in Ohio 
and one of the most interesting in the country. 
From the brink of a giant cliff at the lake's edge, a 
broad mall stretches back to Superior Street. 

Along this stately parkway Cleveland has placed 
her public buildings, planned by expert architects 
and constructed as a carefully unified group. The 
tract of land is a half mile long and a quarter of a 
mile wide. It lies in the heart of the city and has 
been set apart for the city's special use. 

Here you find the Court House, the Federal 
Building, the City Hall. A new art museum, a 
fine public library, an imposing union station and a 
court of honor joining the other buildings at either 
end, are part of this great civic center scheme. 

As you leave your steamer and wander away 
from the lake front, you may wonder why Cleve- 
land came to distinguish herself by this splendid 
group of buildings. Naturally, it must be the result 
of unusual civic spirit. It reflects the fine vision 
which Cleveland had of a beautiful and useful city. 
She has cared about her personal appearance and 
the happiness and well-being of her citizens. 

101 



102 Little Journeys in America 

All over the country there are community centers 
which have been patterned after this ideal which 
Cleveland had the courage to realize. You find 
also that there were pride and perseverance and 
faith away back in the beginning of Cleveland. 

"Oh, yes," says the loyal citizen who escorts you 
down Euclid Avenue. "Cleveland was one of the 
first cities in the United States to have a free public 
school. She believes in service for the people." 

You rather like Euclid Avenue. The old houses 
are somewhat grimy, to be sure; and business is 
clearly crowding its way where private leisure used 
to reign supreme. But the huge lawns and porti- 
coed homes have a kind of lingering dignity even 
in the face of the newest automobile shops which 
have crowded about. 

"It's not what it used to be," admits your guide. 
"But it's growing into a fine business section. It 
was our old Euclid, you know, that Bayard Taylor 
once declared the most beautiful street in the 
country. It isn't so much to look at now, but it's 
gettin' busier all the time." 

You learn of other Cleveland ideas. There is the 
Community Trust, for instance. It controls mil- 
lions of dollars bequeathed for educational and 
charitable purposes. A non-political, non-secta- 
rian committee serves without pay to see that the 
income from these funds is used as it should be. 



Cleveland, the Forest City 103 



If some hungry children in Cleveland need help, 
they are not left to starve while the money trickles 
through the hands of grafting politicians. Cleve- 
land long ago decided to manage her own house- 
keeping. On the whole, she is a surprising success 
at the business. 




Copynght Underwood and Undirwood 

Public Square, Cleveland 

LOOKING AFTER PEOPLE'S MOUTHS 
Some unique movements have originated here, 
such as the National Mouth Hygiene Association. 
Did you ever stop to think that a great deal of 
illness and very many deaths have come from neg- 
lected teeth or diseased throats that were not con- 
sidered serious.'^ Cleveland realized this fact and 
started a campaign against "mouth evils." 



104 Little Journeys in America 

The movement became a nation-wide drive for 
better health among school children through proper 
cleanliness and good "mouth habits." It helped to 
make the people of the United States famous for 
their well-preserved teeth. 

Cleveland resolved to take care of her poor 
people in a businesslike way, and her Federation of 
Charity and Philanthropy became noted. The 
success of the plan led many other cities to adopt 
one similar. 

Cleveland runs her own street cars and gives the 
people transportation at cost. She was the first 
city to introduce a three-cent fare, with free trans- 
fers. A company is hired to operate the lines, but 
the city controls the service and the upkeep of the 
property. The fare is raised or lowered in accord- 
ance with the actual cost of operation. 

Water works, electric light plant, garbage plants, 
and bath houses are also owned by the city. In 
Edgewater Park you may dance in a municipal 
dance hall, conducted with the utmost propriety 
and with refined spirit prevailing. Cleveland has 
had her three-cent movies, regulated by a depart- 
ment of public health. 

GOOD TEAMWORK 
Enthusiastic teamwork has done much to make 
Cleveland the thriving, contented metropolis which 



Cleveland, the Forest City 105 

you find it. Of course, there have been other rea- 
sons for the city's growth. What are they? 

You remember, first of all, the Great Lakes water 
route upon which Cleveland is the first port of 
entry. Then, too, there is the Erie Canal, not so 
important as it was when finished in 1832, but still 
a useful waterway. Before the era of railroads 
it gave Cleveland a great advantage over the 
other lake ports. It connected the winding 
Cuyahoga with the Ohio, and so with the Mis- 
sissippi and the Gulf. And it carried Cleveland 
products direct to Buffalo, Albany, and New 
York. 

Then there is another reason for Cleveland — the 
same thing which has largely made Pittsburgh. 
Coal and oil fields are near at hand, and iron ore is 
easily obtained from Lake Superior regions. Also, 
Cleveland is a convenient half-way point. She not 
only uses these products for herself but distributes 
them among her neighbors. 

Coal and coke from Ohio and Pennsylvania, and 
iron and copper from Michigan load her many 
steamers with smutty cargoes. Nine miles of lake 
shore and eighteen miles of river front are lined 
with docks. You may visit large steel mills here, 
besides many automobile and clothing factories. 
Cleveland is the great wire-nail city, and it makes 
paint and varnish and does some meat packing. 



106 Little Journeys in America 

YOU GO WADING IN WADE PARK OR ROCKY 
CREEK 

Away from the dingy wharves and factories you 
find broad, shady streets and fashionable houses. 
There are very few tenements. Gardens are popu- 
lar, and the many native trees have bestowed the 
pleasant name of Forest City. 

Rockefeller is the largest of many beautiful 
parks. It includes the valley of Doan Brook and is 
connected by splendid boulevards with Gordon 
and Wade Parks. 

At Edge water you may enjoy boating and bath- 
ing and a pretty beach. Along the shore you find 
Lakeview cemetery, a beautiful wooded tract of 
over 300 acres, with Garfield Memorial rising 
200 feet above the lake. Here is a chapel contain- 
ing a statue of Garfield and symbolic panels repre- 
senting events in his life. Beneath the chapel is 
Garfield's tomb. 

You may ride for hours on beautiful drives which 
connect parks and cemeteries and wind along the 
lakeside. You pass valleys thickly wooded, and 
many pleasant bridges over the writhing course of 
the Cuyahoga River. 

There are great clumps of fern along cool ravines. 
You could sit down in the center of one of these 
circles of fern and be hidden completely. The 
crushed leaves give out a delightful odor. The 



Cleveland, the Forest City 107 

fronds grow rusty brown when they grow old and 
ready to crumple down and enrich the bed where 
new shoots will spring up. 

You may find lady's slippers and soft beds of 
moss along the wooded paths. Tall chestnut trees 
drop their yellowed burs with the first heavy frosts. 
Wading in the rocky little stream is great sport; 
but you need to "watch your step," for the smooth 
soapstone bottoms are as slippery as anything you 
can imagine. Many a cheerful wader has sat down 
suddenly and unexpectedly on these flat, soapy 
stones. 

NAMING THE STREETS 

You do not find many landmarks in Cleveland. 
It was a trading post in 1786 and was laid out as a 
town ten years later. Perry's statue in Wade 
Park recalls his great victory on Lake Erie. There 
is an interesting Goethe-Schiller monument, and 
the Brookside Zoological Gardens are worth a visit. 

It seems quite a j^outhful city to have attained 
such importance in industry and in its civic life. 
Two hundred and more years ago it gathered in 
furs and lumber in place of the present loads of 
grain, live stock, and minerals. But its whirring 
motors, its steamers and factories seem very 
modern. There is little to suggest the early pioneer 
life. 



108 Little Journeys in America 

Western Reserve University with handsome 
grounds and buildings, and the Case School of 
Applied Science are conspicuous among the educa- 
tional institutions. There are interesting art 
galleries. Printing and publishing holds an impor- 
tant place. Churches, schools, and theaters are 
well supported. 

Other proofs of Cleveland's enterprise are the 
immense viaducts spanning the river and the long 
breakwaters forming a safe and roomy harbor. 
Ohio sandstone and limestone have been used in 
many of the buildings. 

Motoring along beautiful Bellflower Road or 
Juniper and Magnolia drives, you may remark that 
the streets are well named. And that reminds 
your host of a good Cleveland story. 

"They ought to be. We named 'em all over the 
second time," he observes. 

"Yes, it was sort of confusing at first," he admits. 
"Something like re-christening a large family of 
grown-up children. But the new system seemed 
better." 

So now you find all cross-streets numbered and 
the diagonal roads or drives named. It is an 
orderly system in place of the old hit-or-miss plan 
which did not agree with the city's growing ideal of 
self -improvement. The new scheme was better; 
and so Cleveland had it, even if it did cost a little 
inconvenience. 



Cleveland, the Forest City 109 

Cleveland is friendly and hospitable. Whether 
you shop at the excellent stores, attend the theater, 
or walk about the streets, you are likely to meet 
with gracious treatment. Its homes are open to 
you. The real Clevelander responds to your 
appreciation. It is his city. He has had a hand in 
making it, and he feels a just pride in whatever it 
has that is worth while. 



THE SOUTH 

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^--^ hve oaks; patches of pond hhes He basking in 
the sun ; saw-edged grass waves ten feet high about 
you, as your canoe winds the rippHng paths of the 



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Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Moss Covered Oaks, Florida 



Florida Everglades. Glossy green vines mat them- 
selves into walls and towers like fantastic summer 
houses. Giant ferns stretch frond fingers ten feet 
in length. Delicate orchids lift fairy blooms. 



110 



The South 111 

There are the rich odor of hyacinths and the clean 
fresh scent of long-leaved pines. 

The fascination of the strange and unexplored, 
haunts these tropical swamp lands. But before 
following far the lure of the shining water ways 
spread among flat, grassy islands, you should secure 
the services of a faithful Indian guide, one of the 
brown, bare-footed Seminoles whose fathers 
threaded this treacherous wilderness centuries 
before the coming of the white man. 

An Indian has the peculiar ability to cross the 
Everglades at will. This is an accomplishment 
which many whites have imagined they might also 
possess. But disaster lies in wait for the venture- 
some paleface. He becomes confused by the maze 
of smiling waterpaths and the multitude of grassy 
islands. 

Chilled by the thick night vapours, weakened by 
the dank day heat, and tortured by swarms of 
black gnats and flies, many white explorers have 
been glad to trust to some red-turbaned Seminole 
who happened to cross their trail in his dug-out 
canoe. 

But one might travel days without meeting an 
Indian, though there are about 300 living in the 
Everglades. Their rude palmetto-thatched huts 
perch along the island shores, and the Indians seem 
equally at home on water or land. 



112 Little Journeys in America 

SNAKES AND TURTLES 

There are snakes in the Everglades, though you 
probably will not see them draped across your path 
as frequently as some pictures of Florida would 
lead one to expect. Deadly moccasins and rattle- 
snakes there are, but they seem to hold no terror 
for the placid Seminole. As your boat skims a 
shadowy shoal, you may detect a venomous hissing. 
This may be the voice of a lurking serpent, but it is 
more likely the *'bluff" of a large mother turtle 
who is contemplating a journey up the beach for 
the purpose of digging a nest in the sand and who 
wishes to discourage any curious intruders. 

Turtles are plentiful along the Florida coast. 
A turtle lays hundreds of eggs in a deep sand pit, 
covers it carefully and leaves the hatching to be 
done by an obliging tropic sun. Turtles are 
caught, you know, by being turned over on their 
backs; in this position they are helpless. So the 
turtle hunter goes along the beach upsetting every 
huge shell-back he can find, and leaving them for 
later collection. 

Many springs gush forth in this balmy land of 
flowers. They trickle over moss and fern in a most 
refreshing fashion. It seems little wonder that old 
Ponce de Leon and other romantic persons sought 
here for a fountain of immortal youth. If there 
were any such precious treasure it would be right at 



The South 113 

home among the green forests and velvety breezes 
of southern Florida. Springs supply the Ever- 
glades and keep the water fresh. 

IS IT ALWAYS SUNNY? 

But for all the charms of the "Sunny South" you 
should not expect banks of bloom in January. 
You may find, instead, an air of somberness in the 
tangle of grasses and scrub willow along the flats. 
And you may be absolutely homesick for the sight 
of a hill. There are sometimes chilling northeast 
winds. And there is much rather desolate white 
sand. Sometimes the rain pours in drenching 
torrents. 

But springtime bursts forth with a bower of 
blossoms that will satisfy your most flowery 
dreams. And the great pine woods are always fas- 
cinating. There are rare bouquets to be gathered 
here in the midst of winter, and an added charm is 
given by the necessity of hunting a bit. 

Jessamine wreathes its yellow bells over festoons 
of gray moss. Crisp holly leaves and crimson 
berries spread woodland cheer. And the sun 
gleams warm through the tall pines and the 
branching live oaks. Ferns and grasses are plenti- 
ful, often springing from the upper sides of oak 
limbs. 

When the sap comes up, there are singing negroes 



114 Little Journeys in America 

gathering turpentine from the largest pine trees. 
Gashes are cut at the base of the trunk, and the 
white gum collects here and is then removed and 
taken to market. Excellent lumber is provided by 
these straight-trunked pines. 

Cypress trees grow in the lower coast regions. 
They make the best canoe wood. But a cypress 
has to be about two hundred years old before it is 
large enough for lumber. 

WHERE ARE THE BIRDS? 

You have heard of the gorgeously colored or 
delicately plumaged birds of our southern forests. 
Some few of these remain, but most of them have 
perished through the white man's greed and the 
white woman's desire for feathery adornment. 

Says a Florida traveler: "An Indian leaves 
enough of the old birds to feed the young of a 
rookery, but a white man kills the last plume bird 
he can find and leaves the young ones to die in their 
nests." 

Bird life has suffered cruelly at the hands of 
tourists. 

You hear whip-poor-wills calling in the long soft 
evenings, and you will find wild turkeys and heron 
in the swampy woodlands. Pelicans sweep like 
white clouds along the sandy costs. Gold and 
scarlet humming-birds shimmer against gray- 
green mosses. 



The South 115 

WHITE FIELDS OF COTTON 

As you travel around the circle of the Gulf, you 
find large fields of rice and sugar cane. Cotton 
lands are here, also. Texas is the leading state in 
the production of this important crop. You may 
watch hundreds of busy pickers snatching the 
fluffy tufts and filling huge canvas bags that look 
like feather beds. Galveston is a large port from 
which rice, lumber, and cotton are shipped. New 
Orleans is a great sugar and rice market. 

Back of the low coast lands you find small fruit 
and vegetable farms in the mountain foothills. 
The corn belt reaches down through northern 
Georgia and Mississippi. But before you leave 
Florida for the mountains and valleys farther 
north, you will want to visit old Saint Augustine. 

Here you walk down dreamy southern streets, 
past trickling fountains and blossomy gardens. 
There are long avenues of magnolia trees, rustling 
palms, blue skies, and shining sands. Here are the 
old city gates which once frowned in the face of 
the invader. Here, also, are the time-stained ram- 
parts of Fort Marion, where the Spanish flag 
waved in the days of Saint Augustine's youth. 

Quaint St. George's Street is overhung with 
Spanish balconies. You may visit the "Fountain of 
Youth," a bubbling spring where Ponce de Leon is 
said to have drunk hopefully, only to be disillu- 



116 Little Journeys in America 

sioned by the clear mirror of the laughing little 
fountain. 

Saint Augustine seems a truly ancient city. 
You feel the subtle spell of centuries in its long, 
tree-bordered streets. Yet it is a place where one 
might well dream of the magic of youth. 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Oldest House in United States 
St. Augustine, Fla. 

RESTFUL DAYS AT SAVANNAH 

There is a soothing joy in the luscious restfulness 
of Savannah. Public parks stretch serenely 



118 Little Journeys in America 

through her broadest avenues. Lovely old homes 
are tucked away behind iron fences in twisting 
side streets. Near the city are some of the famous 
plantation houses with stately grounds, shaded 
drives, and humble slave quarters. T^hese seem a 
little lonely and pathetic now, with their memories 
of other days. 

Along the water front are busy wharves as well 
as silver marshlands, magical in moonlight and the 
salt breath of the sea. On an old estate near 
Savannah there is a grass-grown graveyard where 
the naturalist, John Muir, slept for a night or two 
while he was wandering through the Southland. 
Some funds that he was expecting did not arrive as 
scheduled; and being without money to pay a 
hotel bill he thought of the secluded graveyard 
which had charmed him with its beautiful trees and 
long spongy grass as he came through it on an 
afternoon ramble. He returned, found a grassy 
pillow, and slept serenely under the stars. 

Charleston, South Carolina, has been called 
"the aristocratic capital of the United States." 
It has proud old southern families, broad verandas, 
fine trees, gardens, vines, and Saint Michael's 
Church. There are mellow old bells in Saint 
Michael's tower, which date back to the building 
of the church in 1764. The bells were once taken 
by a British officer during the Revolution, but 



The South 119 

were returned after they had been shipped to 
England. They were broken to pieces by Sher- 
man's devastating army; but the shattered bronze 
was recast in the ancient molds, and the bells ring 
on as in the years of Charleston's youth. 

You may walk in the churchyard, which keeps 
its sacred calm in the midst of busy streets. You 
read famous Colonial names where jessamine and 
oleander riot over the moldering tombs. 

Set in their blossoming gardens are homes of the 
present aristocracy of Charleston. The houses are 
red-roofed and creamy -walled. The gardens are 
mossy and half-hidden, with grilled gateways and 
subtle, illusive fragrance. A moonlight ramble 
through Charleston streets gives you a strange 
feeling of enchantment. 

In the early morning many negro hucksters drive 
their carts through the narrow streets, crying their 
vegetables or sea food. Battery Park is a fas- 
cinating pleasure ground with its semi-tropical 
trees and its fine view of the harbor. Out from 
Charleston are many delightful side-trips. You 
may visit the Isle of Palms; you may drive to old 
plantations; or you may call at Summerville, a 
rambling resort in the midst of shaggy pines and 
moss-draped oaks. 

In Charleston is the Colonial Exchange Build- 
ing where General Moultrie walled up 100,000 



120 Little Journeys in America 

pounds of gun powder; and it remained, without 
being discovered, while the British held the town. 
Here a ball was given in honor of General Washing- 
ton. 

IN THE OLD DOMINION 

At Richmond you visit the historic capital, top- 
ping Schokoe Hill and recalling the spirit and tradi- 
tions of the Old South. Here is the splendid 
Houdini statue of Virginia's famous son whom she 
gave to be the "Father of His Country." This is a 
notable work of art and regarded as the finest 
statue of Washington. 

Richmond has dignified streets, beautiful green 
hills, and the lordly James River. In Hollywood 
cemetery are the graves of James Monroe, John 
Tyler, and Jefferson Davis, with many soldier dead. 
St. John's Church in which Patrick Henry made 
his famous speech, is still standing in Richmond. 
The city has a modern, as well as an ancient, 
spirit. She has much of the charm of the grand 
old days, but she is also alive to the present. 

There were decades of poverty; but since those 
post-Civil-War times, she has built skyscrapers and 
miles of pavement. The social life of the old capitol 
is still alluring. Gay young girls fluff their hair 
before the self -same mirrors that reflected belles of a 
century or two ago. Gallant young men motor 



The South 



121 



through dusky streets and ahght at the doors of 
great square houses where the beaux of an older 
Richmond reined their pracing horses. 

The same splendid water-power which the Eng- 
lish settlers found here in 1609 has led to the devel- 




St. John's Church, Richmond 

opment of various mills and factories. You may 
visit modern tobacco fields along the James where 
the Indians once cultivated this interesting plant 
and introduced it to John Smith and his followers. 
Tobacco is still a leading export, also grain, iron, 
and flour. 



122 Little Journeys in America 

Beyond Richmond lie the beautiful Shenandoah 
Valley, the peaks of the Blue Ridge, and the rocky 
streams and leafy forests of the Kentucky and 
Tennessee mountains. 



NEW ORLEANS, THE OLD FRENCH CITY 

T TNDER quaint iron balconies in the old French 
^^ Quarter of New Orleans you walk through 
ancient narrow streets, past battered shops and 
walls of adobe, past patio gardens abloom with 
violets and jessamine. The balconies cast a grate- 
ful shade in the long summer afternoons ; and when 
it rains, they are also a welcome shelter. 

A parrot calls from behind a deep stone doorway, 
and you follow the covered entrance to a sunlit 
courtyard shut in by low old houses and shaded by 
blossoming trees. Here are other balconies, half 
hidden with clambering vines, and broad outdoor 
stairways leading to the second and- third stories. 
The fountain that once gurgled musically in the 
courtyard is rusted and empty, but the magnolias 
are fresh with glossy leaves and blossoms ; and the 
sky smiles softly over the red-tiled roofs and the 
ruined walks and decaying walls. 

A little of the leisurely splendor of the old French 
city seems to have lingered here in the grass-grown 
patio. Perhaps a gray -haired madame smiles at 
you with gracious courtesy. Perhaps a group of 
Italian children chatter on the steps where French 
children used to play. "The Quarter" is slowly 

123 



124 Little Journeys in America 

losing its ancient charms, but it still makes New 
Orleans our most foreign city. 

It reminds us of the years when New Orleans 
was the capitol of the French colony of Louisiana. 
Though the country was ceded to Spain in 1763, 
the French spirit still remained strong; and the 
Spanish added their characteristics to the pic- 
turesqueness of New Orleans. Then Louisiana 
again became a French colony, and was purchased 
by the United States in 1803. 

On down the balconied street is a gorgeous old 
mansion now falling to decay, which was prepared 
for the exiled Napoleon. Oh, yes, it was a great 
secret in those old days when New Orleans was 
young ! The little Corporal was to have been res- 
cued from ignominous St. Helena, to have been 
borne to liberty by a swift pirate ship, and to have 
lived magnificently in the old house at 514 Chartres 
Street. 

"The plan was never carried out.^" you question. 

"But, no," sighs the gentle old care-taker who 
has told you the story. "Alas! A sailing ship 
brings the news. He is dead!" In the midst of his 
reminiscent grief the old man shrugs faintly at the 
finality of the end. "Otherwise," he adds with a 
bright smile, "we have, what you say .f' Kidnapped 
him, yes." 

You observe the old care-taker's "we." Ah, 
New Orleans is still a little French! Yes? 



New Orleans, the Old French City 125 

YOU FIND THE OLD MARKET 
You visit the picturesque old market, with its 
weahh of food and color — purple and blue in the 
fish stalls, like a bit of the shimmering sea; also the 
scarlet of lobsters and the silver of speckled trout; 
baskets of oranges, groves of bananas, heaps of 
wild flowers; limp gray ducks with violet neck- 
feathers; bronze turkeys; and bunches of bright 
little reed-birds. 

You discover the Hotel Royal, once used as a 
capitol, now a ruinous tenement. Here great 
statesmen and beautiful ladies dined in the old 
days from plates of gold. In the musty rotunda is 
the ancient slave block. 

You visit the old Spanish court house, its only 
relic of justice a set of iron-bound stocks. Another 
structure reminds you of the Spanish period in 
New Orleans, from 1763 to 1800. St. Louis cathe- 
dral is still substantial and impressive. Its crypt 
holds the bones of distinguished Frenchmen and 
Spaniards alike. Its tiny back garden was a 
favorite dueling place. 

AT THE FRENCH OPERA HOUSE 

Many gay scenes have been staged in the French 

Opera House, none more splendid, perhaps, than 

the annual Mardi Gras revels. Here met the 

wealth and beauty of a bygone century. Great 



126 Little Journeys in America 

singers bowed to the approval of New Orleans 
while New York was regarding the opera as a 
doubtful venture. 

Having felt something of the spirit of old New 
Orleans, you will understand the spirit of the 
famous Carnival of Mardi Gras. You would enjoy 
the merry maskers, the huge flotillas, the richness 
and beauty of this gorgeous pageant, when the 
new city as well as the old joins in the fun and 
frolic of the rule of jovial "King Rex." Begin- 
ning with 1837 these great parades were given 
annually, and there were celebrations of Mardi 
Gras before that. The festival season really 
begins twelve nights after Christmas with the ball 
of the "Twelfth Nighters." Other celebrations 
occur, and there are great planning and secrecy 
in regard to the final event. 

KINGS AND QUEENS OF THE REVEL 

On the Monday before Ash Wednesday, King 
Rex arrives in royal state. He is given the "keys 
of the city" and parades the streets in a golden 
car, followed by attendants in splendid costume. 
Queens of love and beauty hold sway. Proteus 
appeared with another cavalcade, and a great ball 
at the French Opera House. 

The next day, Mardi Gras, or "Fat Tuesday," 
is the great day of days. Maskers throng the 



New Orleans, the Old French City 127 

streets in the most fantastic of costumes. King 
and queen parade in a glory of purple and gold and 
rose. A prince in blue velvet finds his blushing 
Cinderella. From morning till night the streets 
are filled with revelers and the day of pleasure 
ends with a pageant and ball at the Opera House. 
Lights, music, dancing, laughter, fairyland! New 
Orleans has them with Latin abandon. Thousands 
of dollars are spent on parades, and thousands of 
visitors come to the city for the carnival. 

But New Orleans is more than a m^d street 
frolic or quaint old court yards and historic 
buildings. There is plenty of modern business, 
the work of today as well as the dreams of yester- 
day. Beyond Canal Street is the new city, teeming 
with traffic, busy in its cotton mills, its sugar 
refineries, its repair shops, its railroad offices, its 
giant warehouses. 

THE WHARVES ARE CROWDED 

But you must visit the wharves to appreciate 
the New Orleans of the present. Here you find 
levees, those huge walls which hold the river water 
in a channel that is higher than the low flats 
around the city. You climb up the banks of the 
"Father of Waters" and look down at the level 
streets. 

If the levees should break .^ That is an "if" 



128 Little Journeys in America 

that must never happen. The city will try very 
hard to see to that. New Orleans knows the 
terror and devastation of flood. The yellow 
waters are now carefully guarded. There are bags 
of sand along the banks for repairing the slightest 
weakness of the levees. Caution has been learned 
by experience. 

But you find a busy harbor here, 110 miles 
from the mouth of the Mississippi. Sugar, 
molasses, cotton, coffee, rice, fruit, lumber, pork, 
tobacco, hides, these are some of the things which 
pass through the great river port, some of the 
freight which you see heaped under steel sheds 
extending for two miles along the levees. For the 
city's own manufacturing, coal is shipped down 
the river from Pittsburgh and the Middle West. 

Sailors from all over the world man the ships 
which you see along the wharves. There are ships 
from Calcutta and Liverpool and Glasgow. East 
Indians with red caps and ear-rings; Mexicans, 
Spaniards, French, English, German, South Ameri- 
cans, Africans: a motley crew it is to tread the 
long wharves and handle the ships from many 
lands. 

Here are stalwart negroes unloading a cargo 
of bananas from Costa Rico. A queer yellow 
building stretches out huge, leverlike arms, dang- 
ling the chains which haul up the long green 



New Orleans, the Old French City 129 

bunches. The negroes take the bananas and load 
them on cars to be shipped by fast freight to the 
north. 

You see bags of sugar in sprawHng heaps. 
Sugar is the great export of New Orleans, though 
cotton is also an important item. Coffee arrives 
from South America and is sent on to interior 
cities all over the country. Watching the stream 
of trade down the yellow river and through the 
warehouses to the raih'oads, you will appreciate 
the foresight of Governor Bienville of Louisiana, 
who chose the site for the city, away back in 1718. 

IS IT A CRESCENT CITY? 

You have doubtless heard New Orleans called 
the "Crescent City." It has now outgrown the 
name which was given to it when the old French 
town spread around the river, bend in the form 
of a crescent. It is now much more than a crescent. 

For a time the softness of the flat marshy ground 
made the building of skyscrapers impracticable. 
The dampness also caused yellow fever and 
malaria. But an excellent drainage system has 
now been provided. The ground has become 
firm enough for a skyscraper foundation, and the 
city is adding tall buildings to her modern business 
streets. Many other cities could profit by her 
methods of guarding against the mosquito menace. 



130 Little Journeys in America 



Cisterns and even waterspouts must be kept 
screened to prevent the breeding of these germ- 
carriers. And the old yellow fever scourge is no 
more. 

New Orleans is a city of fascinating gardens. 
Beautiful palms, magnolias, and other semi- 
tropical trees border 
the avenues of the 
residence sections. 
Orange, lemon, fig, 
and camphor trees 
mingle with oaks, 
maples, and willows 
of a more northern 
clime. Outside the 
city are forests of 
cypress and live oak 
hung with long gar- 
lands of gray Spanish 
moss. 

Lake Ponchartrain 
is a popular outing 

Carondelet Street, New Orleans plaCC, witll fislliug, 

boating, and picnics in abundance. Audubon 
Park is a fine stretch of 300 acres along the river 
front. You may sit here and bask in the luxury cf 
soft winds and orange blossoms. And sometime 
you should seek the magic spell of southern 
moonlight and mocking birds. 




New Orleans, the Old Frencli City 131 

BREAKFAST AT MADAME'S 
In the ancient "Place d'Armes" you meet the 
equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson. Here the 
victorious general was welcomed after his defeat 
of the British and conducted to the solemn Te 
Deum in the cathedral. The statue was erected in 
1846, and the name of the Place changed to Jackson 
Square. In one of the tall brick houses across the 
way, Jennie Lind stopped during an engagement. 
French names meet you at many corners. There 
is a broad thoroughfare bearing Napoleon's name? 
and on either side are his victories — Jena, Berlin, 
Milan, Marengo and Austerlitz Streets. 

You will find cafes, dingy and romantic, where 
you may enjoy the far-famed New Orlean cookery. 
There is Madame Bugue's, for instance, where 
you breakfast most fastidiously, once you have 
climbed the rickety stairs and found a place in the 
long low dining room. It is many years since 
she began the serving of breakfasts to the French 
market-men, but her delicious respasts gradually 
became known to city people and tourists; and 
finally, her cafe was as famous as the old churches 
and pretty balconies. The Madame left the little 
cafe many years ago, but her name and her fame 
have survived. There are many other restaur- 
ants, more elegant and less famous, where 
southern delicacies abound. 



New Orleans, the Old French City 133 

And that you may feel the tragedy as well as 
the life and gaiety of the old French city, you 
should see her cemeteries, the great tombs, the 
long sealed ovens, and the famous names of the 
past. 

Jean Lafitte, Dominic You! Are the names 
familiar? They belong to the tales of picturesque 
buccaneers. They belong to the days when pirates 
were bold. It was Dominic You who was to have 
made the dash for the exiled Napoleon. 

Priests and pirates sleep side by side in the placid 
city of the dead. And beyond flows the yellow 
river, busy with its tearing of banks and its build- 
ing of deltas, burdened with its ships from the far 
blue seas. 



THE MIDDLE WEST 

/^REEN meadows sprinkled with wild flowers, 
^^ bits of woodland beside placid streams, 
miles of tasseled cornfield and stretches of golden 
wheat or oats: these you find in the Middle West 
in midsummer. A two-days' trip by train — from 
Chicago to Des Moines and from Des Moines to 
Denver — will give you a suggestive view of the 
vast farming region, which produces more ,food- 
stuffs than any other part of the United States 
and feeds a very large share of the world. 

It is a beautiful stretch of country with its own 
charm of landscape, though far from the moun- 
tains and the sea. There are picturesque bluffs 
along its many rivers; and groves of oak, elm, and 
hickory with festoons of wild grapevine; and 
occasional pine and box elder. Dogwood, like 
great bridal bouquets, waves its white blossoms in 
springtime. Wild crab-apple trees spread bowers 
of pink bloom along the hill slopes, and violets 
blue the roadsides and wood-paths. Red and 
yellow sweet-williams flame across the prairies in 
summer, and wild roses and columbines bloom on 
sunny hill-tops. 

Shy, fluffy "cotton-tails" bob down grassy 
ravines, like terrified balls of fur with pointing 

134 



The Middle West 135 

legs and ears. Chattering squirrels flirt their 
plumy tails in the oaks and hickories, blue-jays 
call rollicking notes from old apple orchards, and 
meadow larks trill from hedges and fence posts. 

It is a comfortable homelike country, with 
only a hint of wildness in its most secluded wood- 
land glens. You will pass pleasant looking farm 
houses in their groves of maple and willows, and 
large green yards with rows of lilacs and hardy 
rose bushes. There are huge barns for stock and 
immense round silos where hay and fodder are 
stored for winter feeding. But the green and 
yellow corn land, which surrounds you on every 
side, is perhaps the most striking and characteristic 
feature. 

In late summer the corn has reached its greatest 
height, sometimes eight or ten feet, with crisp 
green blades, thick, drooping ears and tossing, 
tan-colored tops. The long rows whirl past your 
train like spokes in a giant living wheel of a 
thousand centers. A rich odor of green ears and 
rank leaves comes from the sturdy mass. With 
the first frost the corn turns pale yellow ; and if the 
stalks are to be left standing, wagons begin to 
rattle through the long rows. The horses nibble 
corn to their hearts' content; and men, two to a 
wagon as a rule, gather the ears and toss them 
over the high side-boards. Granaries are filled 



136 Little Journeys in America 

for the great herds of hogs and cattle ; for it usually 
pays better to feed the corn and then sell the stock 
than to ship the grain itself. There are large 
packing houses at Omaha, Kansas City and Saint 
Louis as well as at Chicago, the great meat center. 

PROSPEROUS FARMERS 

Though this is the corn, hog, and wheat section, 
fine cattle, h(5rses, and sheep are also raised. 
Automobiles have largely taken the place of the 
horses and buggies that used to travel the dusty or 
muddy roads, and the roads have been much 
improved in consequence. 

You pass thriving little towns with their stores 
and streets crowded on Saturday afternoons, 
when the whole farming neighborhood goes to do 
its weekly shopping. You would find in the 
country stores something of the old custom of 
barter, when fruit and vegetables, as well as butter 
and eggs, are traded for tea, sugar, and "dry -goods" 
or whatever the farmer wants that he does not 
raise in his own fields and gardens. 

Rural mail routes and telephones and the auto- 
mobile have brought the Middle West farmer into 
close contact with the outside world. His is no 
longer the lonely, isolated existence which his 
father or grand-father experienced when the 
country was newly settled. Many of the old 



The Middle West 137 

pioneers drove to their homes with ox-teams, 
fording the streams and building their own rude 
houses a hundred miles or so from any real center 
of population. 

The first ones settled along the wooded streams, 
sheltered from the piercing winter winds by hills 
and trees. They made log cabins of huge tree 
trunks or drove fifty miles or so for lumber at one 
of the towns on the Mississippi. They had to cut 
timber and clear the land for their crops; while 
those who braved the treeless prairies found 
fertile fields ready for planting, once the tough 
prairie sod had been "broken" with the plough and 
harrow. 

Wood or mines of soft coal furnished fuel, and 
the early farmer often had to haul these from a 
distance. There are two great coal areas in this 
section, the Illinois coal fields and the Iowa- 
Missouri district. He became very independent, 
this pioneer mid-westerner; and something of his 
spirit of sturdy industry and self-reliance has 
remained. The country drained by the Missis- 
sippi-Missouri system has been called "The Great 
Valley of Democracy," and it deserves the name. 
Vast rustling corn fields or the waving wheat 
lands of the west and north are now the farmer's 
chief source of wealth. The Middle West feeds a 
large part of the world, and this fact makes the 



138 Little Journeys in America 

farmer a very important person. His dairies and 
grain fields furnish our bread and butter; his hogs 
and cattle and sheep and poultry provide our 
meat and eggs in large quantities. We could get 
along without almost anybody else better than 
we could without the Middle West farmer, and 
he knows this as well as we do. 

GOLDEN WEALTH OF MAIZE 

Often the corn is harvested green, when the ears 
have matured. Large machines run by steam or 
gasoline cut the whole plant off near the ground, 
and other machines called shredders tear it up 
into small pieces. The grain is shelled from the cob 
and ground into meal. The shredded stalks and 
leaves are stored in air-tight silos and used for 
feeding. On the smaller farms the cutting is often 
done by hand. Corn is the most valuable crop 
raised in the United States; and the great corn 
states are Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Mississippi, and 
Kansas. Almost any time of year you are likely 
to meet long lines of freight cars loaded with hogs 
and cattle for the great packing houses of the mid- 
western cities. Here are mills also for grinding the 
corn into meal. Corn is sometimes stored for 
several seasons in huge bins called elevators which 
you will notice along the railroad tracks at many 
stations. It is shipped by railroad or river and 



The Middle West 139 

lake routes to eastern cities; and from there much 
of it goes to England, where the climate is too cool 
and damp to grow corn well. 

It is interesting to remember that corn, or 
maize, is one of the things we got from the Indians; 
and that these mammoth crops had their begin- 
ning in the little patches of cultivated lands that 
the red man dug up with a clam shell or some other 
primitive tool and planted by hand several hundred 
years ago. The long summer season, frequent 
rains and plenty of sunshine, together with rich 
soil and level fields which are easily cultivated, 
have made the middle section of the Middle West 
the greatest corn belt in the world. The United 
States produces about four-fifths of the world's 
corn, and most of it is grown in this vast fertile 
region across Illinois and through Kansas. Corn is 
said to bring in more actual money than all our 
gold, silver, and lead mines. If we include the value 
of the cattle and hogs which the crops feed, the 
income which farmers receive from this one grain is 
enormous. 

Much improvement has been made recently in 
the quality of corn and in the amount raised per 
acre. Boy's Corn Clubs, started by the Agricul- 
tural Department at Washington, have encouraged 
the farmers' sons to produce the best crops possible. 
Girls' Canning Clubs have interested the girls in 



140 T.ittlo Joumoys in Anieriea 

the best methods of putting up fruit niui voiro- 
tables. 

Hay is another great crop \vhich you will notitv 
on a trip thivugh this seetion. Timothy and 
doA'er, mixeil. form beautiful fields of waving green 
graces and flutfy pink blossoms. If you were 
wanting to plant something to make the prettiest 
sort of meadow imaginable you cv^uld hardly choose 
a more effective combmation. Alfalfa fields are a 
deeper green with bluisli purple bloom which is 
even more fragrant than reti clover. These hay 
fields usually produce two crops in a season, and 
sometimes more. The great hay area is much the 
same as the corn territory except tliat it extends 
farther east. All of the states raise some hay. 
those which lead in its production being Iowa. New 
York. Nebraska. Kansas, and Minnesota. 

WHERE WHEAT FIELDS W.U'E 

As you pass through Iowa and eastern Nebraska 
you begin to leave the waving corn lands, varied 
by fields of yellow oats and purple alfalfa and the 
green and red of timothy and clover. A little 
farther north and west is the wheat, hmidreds of 
acres of it. rippling in the prairie wind like a golden 
inland sea. If you should visit these fields in 
harvest time, you would find immense machines 
drawn bv engines or manv teams of horses: and 



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142 Little Journeys in America 

the world. The Chinese have used it for nearly 
five thousand years. 

America is now one of the greatest wheat 
countries. Some of the largest flour mills are in 
Minneapolis. Denver is also a great flour market. 
Rye is grown in the northern part of the Middle 
West. Lumber was once a great product in Wis- 




Minneapolis from Across the Mississippi 

consin, Minnesota, and Michigan. Lumbering 
is still carried on in these states, but the forests 
have been greatly reduced. 

You would find very few mines on your trip from 
Chicago to Denver. Soft coal in Illinois and 
Missouri and Iowa mined for local consumption. 
Some lead is mined in Missouri, Kansas, and Wis- 



The Middle West 143 

consin, and copper is still an important product 
around the Great Lakes. You might notice 
ledges of limestone as you cross the Mississippi. 
This is quarried for building purposes, and there 
are other useful building stones in various local- 
ities. 

EXCELLENT SCHOOLS HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED 

The farms which you pass on your trip west from 
Chicago have changed very much in the last 
twenty -five years. It is a different country from 
the catamount-haunted woodland and the coyote- 
haunted prairie which the first settlers knew fifty 
or sixty years ago. Large modern homes have 
replaced most of the old cabins; graveled roads 
have succeeded the mud-rutted Indian trails; and 
schools, villages, and important cities are frequent. 

The Middle West is interested in many things 
besides hogs and cattle. Iowa has a record for 
sending more of its young people to colleges and 
universities than any other state. There are fewer 
illiterate people in this state in proportion to the 
population than in any other equal area in the 
world. 

Excellent state universities throughout the 
Middle West rank with any similar institutions 
in the country, and there are many small colleges 
and private schools. Agricultural colleges are 



144 Little Journeys in America 

naturally well-developed in this great farming 
section. At the university of Illinois you would 
find an interesting agricultural department, and 
the influence of these schools is being seen in the 
scientific farming and stock-raising of the country. 

In Kansas City, Missouri, you might visit one 
of the largest automobile schools. In Minneapolis, 
Saint Louis, Chicago, and other cities there are 
splendid universities and professional schools. 
Many of the pioneer settlers came from New 
England and other eastern states, and they were 
eager to build schools and churches such as they 
left in the earlier settled sections. So the changes 
came quickly. 

You might meet a gray -haired woman on your 
trip across Iowa who could remember when the 
country west of the Mississippi was in danger of 
Indian attacks, and the scattered settlers gathered 
for safety at old Fort Des Moines. She could tell 
you how she and her mother and younger sisters 
were gathering wild black berries in the woods and 
hid like frightened partridges when a group of 
painted Indians passed on an old trail below. Then 
they scurried home to warn the father. For war 
paint meant trouble, and the lonely frontiersman 
could not risk his family's safety too long. Then 
came a hurried departure at night with a few other 
neighbors. The heavy wagons moved, slowly over 



The Middle West 145 

the long road to the Fort. The men carried guns. 
There were terrifying shadows among the trees 
and the starthng cries of owls and coyotes on the 
open prairies. The Iowa settlers usually escaped 
in safety, but terrible massacres in Minnesota 
marked the advance of the white race. 

The Middle West leads in the production of 
corn, hogs, wheat, oats, and cattle. Chicago, Saint 
Louis, Omaha, and Kansas City are great railway 
and meat-packing centers. Minneapolis, Saint 
Paul, and Denver are flour markets. Coal, lead, 
and building stone are mined. Lumbering is still 
an important industry in the northeast section. 



CHICAGO, THE CITY OF THE LAKE 
AND PRAIRIES 

A BOUT the first thing you encounter in Chicago 
'^^*- is the lake breeze. Cool and refreshing in 
midsummer, raw and chilling in gray days of 
winter, boisterous and giddy in the early spring- 
time, it pervades the whole sprawling, sky- 
scraping metropolis. 

And when you have threaded the city by auto- 
mobile through its connecting parks and boulevard 
or by the elevated trains which scream and thunder 
past its back doors and around its business blocks, 
you are still, even in the bleak, dizzying monotony 
of its buildings, aware of the two great natural 
features which have made Chicago — the Lake and 
the prairies. In all the city's smoke and noise and 
vastness these remain, the tossing opal sea before 
its twenty -four miles of lake front, the stretching 
level immensity of corn and wheat and grazing 
lands to the west. 

You may wonder at first how the spirit of the 
prairie has managed to creep upon you in the midst 
of the rushing streets. The lake is there before 
your eyes at so many grimy corners, spreading its 
clean, ruffled blueness along such sweeping drive- 
ways, smiling at the very doorsteps of the bustling, 

146 



Chicago, the City of the Lake 147 

business section. And besides there is the lake 
breeze. But the sense of the prairie comes a bit 
more subtly and in the end, perhaps more power- 
fully, over the grassy parks and along the windy 
avenues, through the flat, gray bleakness of manu- 
facturing neighborhoods and the boasting young 
opulence of wealthy residences, even into the 
heart of this most commercial city — a city of 
packing houses and tailoring shops, and factories 
for soap and iron and steel and harvesting 
machines. 

GRASSES AND STAR FLOWERS 

The largeness and openness of the prairie charm 
you along the famous "Mid-way," with its grass 
and trees and flowers, stretching 660 feet wide and 
a mile long, from Washington to Jackson Park. 
There are rows and rows of pompous houses and 
apartment buildings on the way, and there are the 
stately walls and towers of the university of 
Chicago; but these seem mere children that the 
prairie has taken to her heart. It is prairie sky 
and levelness and soft green grass and rows of 
planted trees. 

Then there are tawny vacant lots left here and 
there between the brick apartment houses, bits of 
actual wildness with unbroken sod upon them. 
Here you may sometimes find real prairie grasses 



148 Little Journeys in America 



and quaint blue-star flowers, and perhaps even a 
specimen of wild onion, that odorous prairie vege- 
table for which Chicago is the Indian name. Some- 
thing of this same level vastness has persisted in 
the parks in spite of formal gardens and artificial 
terraces and trim green hedges and groves of 
shrubs and trees. It sweeps through the maze of 









Copyright Underwood and Underwood 



Field Museum 



streets and building and elevated tracks and looses 
itself only in the white-capped freshness of the 
lake's blue waves. This prairie vastness is 
especially impressive toward evening with the sun 
swung low in a blur of purple haze. 

In the parks you find also reminders of the 
prairie country in the historical associations. 
Statues of Lincoln and Grant and Logan, and at the 



Chicago, the City of the Lake 149 

end of Michigan Avenue, a tablet marking the 
site of old Fort Dearborn. The Field Museum of 
Natural History is located in Grant Park. The 
Art Institute in Grant Park faces the Public 
Library across the Avenue. Adjoining the 
Institute and overlooking the park towards the 



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Lincoln Park, Chicago 



south is "The Great Lakes Fountain," by Lorado 
Taft. Five figures compose the fountain group 
and each represents one of the lakes and holds 
a vase from which water pours into the basin 
below. Parks cover 4,600 acres of the city's 291 
square miles of area and the system of boule- 
vards totals seventy miles. 



150 Little Journeys in America 

TRAINS AND FACTORIES 
In the noise and stir of the down-town sections 
and in the teeming traffic of its great railway 
stations, you feel the powerful pulse of the city's 
industry and commerce. It is the greatest rail- 
way center in the United States and is the terminal 
of every railroad that enters it. The roads which 
converge in or are contributory to the city operate 
120,000 miles of line, which is half the total mileage 
of the United States. Connections reach every 
state in the Union and Canada and Mexico, and 
steamer lines to all parts of the five Great Lakes 
supplement the railroads. 

Below the surface the earth is honeycombed 
with tunnels. Flowing, underground rivers supply- 
ing the city with water are said to rival if not 
surpass in extent the famous aqueducts of ancient 
Rome. Tunnels for street cars pass under the 
Chicago river, and thirty feet below the surface 
there are sixty miles of tunnels to carry heavy 
freight and thus relieve the streets above. The 
city contains more than twice as many miles of 
elevated tracks as do all the other cities of the 
United States combined. 

These thousand of trains and boats gather in 
the grain and live stock from the great inland 
regions and send them out in return for mer- 
chandise from the east. And though she imports 



Chicago, the City of the Lake 151 

many factory products, Chicago's own list of 
manufactured goods is a long one. Her factories 
and packing houses form a great wilderness of 
buildings. At night her busy furnaces flame red 
against the sky. 

THE LARGEST STORE IN THE WORLD 

Covering more than a block and having a total 
floor space of forty -four acres, the retail house of 
"Marshall Field and Company" is the largest 
department store in the world. The Chamber of 
Commerce is one of the finest commercial struc- 
tures, and there is a handsome Court House and 
City Hall. The tower of the Montgomery Ward 
Building is 394 feet and the highest point in the 
city. Here a great goddess of bronze revolves as a 
weather vane. In the noise and smoke and dust of 
the business area, these great buildings seem to 
stand for the monstrous wealth and energy of the 
inland metropolis, the second largest city in Amer- 
ica, the city of the prairies and the lake. 

Chicago has about forty newspapers, a number 
of them representing the great masses of foreigners 
who largely man her industrial plants. On a busy 
corner in the heart of the city is the seventeen-story 
building of the Chicago Tribune, the city's widest 
circulating daily. Five miles southwest of the 
City Hall are the Union Stock Yards covering 



152 Little Journeys in America 

475 acres. Here 32,000 men are employed; and 
millions of dollars worth of cattle, hogs, and sheep 
are slaughtered and packed annually. The average 
of hogs is 6,000,000 head a year. 

With all this surging enterprise, this clash of 
competition, there are, of course, some things 
crushed and stifled, some ugliness and cruelty of 
crowding. You may see it in the miserable slums 
and Ghettos, in the scrapped wrecks of men and 
women, crippled poor and criminal, which haunt 
gray side streets. 

But Chicago has tried to be generous to her 
poor and her sick people. Free hospitals, libraries, 
schools, and museums are there. And in the slum 
district of the great West Side, there is famous 
old Hull House, one of the most efficient settle- 
ment houses in the world, the result of Jane 
Addam's dream of neighborliness. Other missions 
and charities reach a hand to those in distress. 

Germans, Swedes, and Poles are the most 
numerous foreigners, though you seem to meet 
every nationality and foreign type in a half hour's 
walk along Halstead Street. The rapid growth of 
Chicago has given it a rawness and crudity in 
certain quarters, which we do not find in older 
American cities. But the inhabitants of Chicago 
are usually patriotic, know their city and admire 
it in spite of its faults. A New Yorker confines 



Chicago, the City of the Lake 153 

himself to that part of his metropoKs which most 
appeals to him and shrugs his shoulders at the 
rest. But a true Chicagoan is frankly conscious of 
the stock yards, even if he lives on the Lake Shore 
Drive. 

FIRST CABIN BUILT IN 1779 

In 1779 a cabin was built on the west shore of 
Lake Michigan and used as a station for fur traders. 
In 1804 this house was bought by John Kinzie, 
who was the first white man to make his home 
where Chicago now is. The place had been a 
popular camping ground for Indian tribes, and it is 
probable that Mr. Kinzie had occasional callers 
from among his dark-skinned brothers. Other- 
wise, he must have been quite lonely. The name, 
Chicago, was given it by the Indians, probably 
because of the wild onions' being very plentiful 
here. 

The old French fathers, Joliet and Marquette, 
had stopped for a few days in this locality away 
back in 1673. Fort Dearborn was erected in 1803, 
on the south bank of the Chicago river. But as 
late as 1830, when the town was laid out, there 
were only twelve families beside the fort's garrison. 
It must have seemed a meager handful for a town 
here on the untouched prairies, with the blue lake 
at its front door. 



154 Little Journeys in America 

Only about forty years later the city became a 
heap of ashes from the great fire of 1871. There 
were 200 deaths, and 17,450 buildings were 
destroyed. With almost unbelievable energy 
Chicago rose from her ruins. In 1887 the city 
covered less than forty-four square miles. Six 
years later its area was over 186 square miles. 

So Chicago has reason to be proud of her acres 
and acres of towering structures, of her wealth and 
activity and her great world-reaching trade. One 
of the greatest of universities, many first class 
technical and other special schools, splendid parks 
and boulevards, notable art treasures, the most 
efficient of street car systems, the largest railroad 
traffic, the greatest department stores, beautiful 
homes and churches : these are a few of the things 
her energy has achieved in less than a century. 



THE TWIN CITIES 

T ATE summer or early autumn is an interesting 
■*-^ season to visit St. Paul and Minneapolis, the 
thriving twin-cities in the beautiful lake and forest 
region of eastern Minnesota. If you come from 
the East and especially from the eastern cities, you 
feel a delicious sense of openness and freedom in 
the cool, wooded rivers and the spreading fields of 
wheat. 

If you come from the treeless western deserts 
and prairies, you revel in the restful blue lakes, 
the fresh-leaved oaks and maples, and best of all, 
in the joyous, gurgling water falls which leap down 
shady ravines in a riot of feathery spray. These 
charms of nature are all within or close about these 
great sister cities of a great northern state. 

From Minneapolis, "city of laughing water," 
you may go by trolley to the silvery falls from 
which came the Indian part of the name. If it is 
early autumn, the maples will be flaming yellow 
and crimson beside the water; and some of the 
freshly turned leaves will flutter down to eddy 
about in the current, or to lie in spots of red and 
gold on the leafy banks below. There is a bridge 
across the river back of the falls, and beyond that 
are stone waUs and a much-traveled roadway; but 

155 



156 Little Journeys in America 

down in the glen it is secluded and quiet with the 
tall trees and the blue sky, and the water dashing 
over the rocks just as gracefully and just as laugh- 
ingly as it did when the Indian youths and maidens 
walked here and wondered at the music of the falls. 
A statue of Longfellow in this beautiful park 
seems to be eternally dreaming over the immortal 
romance of Hiawatha. 

WHAT BECAME OF ST. ANTHONY 

If you approach Minneapolis by train from St. 
Paul, you may catch a glimpse of the famous old 
St. Anthony Falls if you look down from the top of 
the stone arch bridge. But this torrent, which used 
to plunge so gleefully over its fifty feet of sheer 
precipice, has been surrounded by giant flour mills 
built of the limestone which lies in vast ledges all 
about the city. The mad power of the waters has 
been used to turn steel rollers which grind out the 
many millions of barrels of flour that cause Min- 
neapolis to be known as "the flour city" the world 
over. The same water-power runs the street rail- 
ways in each of the Twin Cities. It turns the 
wheels of huge saw-mills where nearly 600,000,000 
feet of lumber were produced annually before the 
vast pine forests of the Mississippi Valley and the 
North began to fail. 

In St. Anthony Falls, tossing and shouting down 




Minnehaha Falls, Minneapolis 



158 Little Journeys in America 

the Mississippi gorge, lurked the power to build 
cities and railroads, to turn great acres of wheat 
into food for millions of people. And one really 
doesn't mind so much if the giant cataract has 
been harnessed and obscured, the roar of the water 
lost in the roar of the mills. Besides, the force 
of the rapids was threatening the ledge which 
formed the falls; and in 1875 a "wooden apron" 
was built by the United States government at a 
cost of nearly a million dollars, to protect this 
rocky shelf. Thus the power of nature's mighty 
toy was saved and turned to serve the needs of 
men. It seems a very restless and untamed 
torrent still, especially if you view it leisurely 
from beneath the stone bridge at the foot of Sixth 
Avenue South. 

You would enjoy a trip to one of the Twin City 
saw-mills in the autumn season before the northern 
rivers have frozen over. From the river bank you 
may watch the floating tree trunks ; occasionally a 
nimble athlete in flannel shirt, high boots, and 
khaki trousers steps unconcernedly across the 
bobbing logs as they roll over and over in the water. 

It is this athletic workman's business to select 
the logs which are escorted by endless hooked 
chains up an inclined plane to the level of the saw- 
ing floor. Here they are rolled upon monster 
carriages and fed to the different saws, according 



The Twin Cities 159 

to the quality of the timber and the kinds of lumber 
wanted. 

Men work silently in the long, noisy rooms. The 
flying saws whir and scream; there is the spicy 
smell of freshly cut wood; sawdust drips from the 
flashing steel blades; and what had been only a 
little while before a grove of tall, straight pines and 
sturdy oaks is now lumber for houses and rocking 
chairs and automobiles and railroad ties and 
matches and agricultural machinery. 

WHEN THE GRAIN COMES IN 

In October and November the grain rush is 
liveliest. From the stretching prairies of Min- 
nesota and the Dakatos, where thousands of 
harvesters have labored, comes the flood of the 
yellow-brown wheat. There are also millions 
of bushels of rye and oats and corn and flax; but 
the wheat supply is so much the greater that the 
other cereals are insignificant in comparison. 

Thousands of grain cars are sent to the Twin 
Cities every year to take care of the autumn 
harvest. They trail like huge dark serpents across 
the yellow plains. From the elevators or grain 
warehouses of every railroad station they gather 
the stores which are to be poured into St. Anthony's 
flour mills or shipped out to hundreds of surround- 
ing millers as far east as Indiana and Ohio. Min- 



160 little Journeys in America 

neapolis is the largest primary wheat market in the 
world. 

In spite of the splendid railroad facilities at 
hand which St. Paul had started to develop while 
Minneapolis was still an aspiring village, the 
immense yards are often blockaded; and not 
enough cars can be found to handle the millions of 
bushels of wheat. It, of course, takes an army of 
harvesting and other machines to care for the 
tremendous grain crops; and recently the manu- 
facture of agricultural implements has eclipsed 
even the flour and lumber interests of Minneapolis 
and St. Paul. All of these industries only increase 
the importance of the railroad business which made 
St. Paul a great city after her once famous river 
traffic became insignificant. 

In St. Paul you may view the old "William 
Crooks," the first locomotive which ran into the 
virgin country of the great Northwest. In St. 
Paul also you may learn the story of James J. 
Hill, the boy who began his work in the city as 
assistant wharf master and ended it as "Empire 
Builder," the man who realized his dreams of 
developing the splendid resources of the old North- 
west. "Yem Hill," as the Twin City Swedes 
called him, was a genial millionaire whose engaging 
enthusiasm won him friends and fortune. He was 
also a musician and painter and a clever art critic 



The Twin Cities 161 

as well as a man of wealth and an expert railroad 
chief. 

HOW DO THE TWINS PLAY 

There are excellent amusements as well as 
interesting work shops in the Twin Cities and their 
picturesque neighborhood. Canoes dart merrily 
about in the glistening, green-rimmed lakes of the 
wooded parks. And these lakes are not the self- 
conscious, man-made affairs which many city 
park-builders are proud of. They have been dug 
and inoulded and tree-fringed by the gigantic 
fingers of old Mother Nature herself. The banks 
are fascinatingly irregular, with rocky ledges and 
nooks and sleepy, cool lagoons. 

You may paddle your own canoe around these 
alluring sky-blue waters; or you may take one of 
the public launches, say the Sprightly "Maid of 
the Isles," and ride for an hour and a half for 
twenty -five cents, through Lake Calhoun and Lake 
Harriet and Lake of the Isles. Shaded driveways 
wind along the shores and across the bridges 
through leafy glens and over gurgling streams. 

From Lake Harriet the road trails along Min- 
nehaha Creek to the Falls. Here are 200 acres of 
parked land including the grounds of the Min- 
nesota soldiers' home, and from here you may 
follow a parkway to the summit of the Mississippi 
river cliffs about a mile below St. Anthony Falls. 



162 Little Journeys in America 

It is a wonderful park system. Everywhere are 
trees, rocks, green grass, and sparkling water. 
Flowers brighten the banks and braes in summer; 
birds sing, and white sails glisten against the lakes' 
clear blue. To the south wanders the great 
"Father of Waters"; to the west are the wheat 
fields with their waves of green or gold. 

Yachting, swimming, fishing, and hunting are 
sports you may enjoy in addition to golf, tennis, 
and the usual outdoor games of warm weather. 
From the middle of November until early in March 
there is usually good skating; and before snow 
falls, as a rule about Christmas time, the streams 
and lakes may be skirted for miles around. Many 
of the park lakes are kept clear of snow all winter; 
and curling, yachting, sleighing, and horse racing 
on the ice are extremely popular sports. The dry, 
invigorating air lures one to the woods, even in mid- 
winter when trees are gray and brown, and lakes 
and waterfalls are lovely crystals. 

HOW DOES THE MISSISSIPPI BEGIN? 

If you have known the Mississippi only in its 
somewhat sluggish and yellow lower course j^ou 
will delight in the dashing spirit of youth it shows 
in its picturesque beginnings, frolicking over the 
ledge at St. Anthony's and flashing turbulently 
below the bluffs at St. Paul. The source of the 



The Twin Cities 163 

river near lake Itaska is only about 150 miles in a 
direct line from Minneapolis. 

St. Paul was built at the head of navigation on 
the Mississippi in the days when the river was a 
great highway. This made her a famous center 
for trade in furs. River traffic has now given way 
to railroads, and the Twin Cities hold their own in 
this important industry. The Falls of St. Anthony 
led to the founding of Minneapolis, and the river 
has carried its millions of logs from the vast 
pineries of the North. From half a dozen bridges 
you may have picturesque views of the gorge. 

While you are calling on the Twin Cities, you 
will want to visit old Fort Snelling, perched on its 
high bluff at an equal distance from St. Paul and 
Minneapolis as if impartially guarding the safety 
of both. You may go by automobile up the beauti- 
ful river drives or by electric trains, and you will 
find there the great round tower with its Rifle port- 
holes and the hexagonal blockhouse just beyond. 
When the fort was first occupied in 1820, the 
nearest white people lived at Prairie du Chien, 
300 miles away. Candles, beans, pork, and flour 
made the long journey up the river from St. 
Louis. At first the mail came semi-annually, then 
quarterly, and not oftener than bi-monthly until 
the country began to be more thickly settled. 
There are modern barracks and other buildings 



164 Little Journeys in America 

now around the old fort where Charlotte Clark, the 
little daughter of the first Major, gathered wild 
flowers and strawberries in the lonely first 
summers. 

A strong guard was kept to shield the early 
settlers from Indian attack. The Sioux and 
Chippewas were continually fighting each other 
and were often hostile to the whites. The two 
Pond brothers, who were the first missionaries 
in this region, did much to promote the friendli- 
ness of the Indians, who were being angered by the 
steady encroachments upon their lands. These 
devoted teachers lived in a rude cabin which they 
built, at the suggestion of Chief Cloud Man, on a 
site overlooking Lake Calhoun "so that they might 
hear the loons at night." 

Their house of logs, bark, and rough slabs cost 
them much labor; but the cash outlay was only a 
shilling for nails. They studied the Indian 
language and customs and lived on Indian fare. 
For they tried to understand the red man; and in 
order to do this they believed that it was necessary 
to "talk like a native, walk like a native, and as far 
as might be able to live like one!" They did their 
best to keep whiskey from the Indians. They 
printed a paper in the Sioux language and worked 
against the evil influence of idle soldiers and 
cheating traders. Some of their faithful converts 
saved the white settlers when massacres threatened. 



The Twin Cities 165 

Returning along the river to St. Paul, you find 
palatial homes lining Summit Avenue, which 
runs around the crest of St. Anthony Hill ; and you 
will find it hard to realize that little more than 
half a century ago the younger of the Twin Cities 
was a straggling mill town and the older a frontier 
river post. 

St. Paul's new state capitol is a dignified monu- 
ment to the good taste of her citizens and the 
greatness of her state. It is as beautiful a struc- 
ture as will be found among the state capitols. 
Historic murals on its walls suggest the story of 
Minnesota's rapid growth. 

St. Paul has reason to be proud also of her 
Auditorium, the first theater in the country to be 
operated by a city government. It is a home for 
opera, drama, state and national conventions, and 
popular civic concerts. 

You will find the Minneapolis Art Museum a 
stately building, one of the finest of its sort and 
filled with original tapestries, furniture, sculpture, 
and paintings. Out at the edge of Minneapolis, 
with neighborly nearness to St. Paul, is the Univer- 
sity of Minnesota. Giant oaks cover much of its 
beautiful campus of 108 acres overlooking the 
cities and the falls. 

A spirit of adventurous enterprise seems to 
pervade the streets of Minneapolis. You feel a 



166 Little Journeys in America 

more sedate pride in the dignity of St. Paul. In 
both cities are shaded streets and handsome 
dwelhngs, churches, schools and business blocks. 




A Residence Boulevard in Minneapolis 



DETROIT, THE AUTOMOBILE CITY 

TN making a tour of the Great Lakes, you come 
-'^ to a narrow strait about thirty miles long, which 
connects Lake Erie with Lake St. Clair. On this 
stream is the city which the French called Detroit, 
meaning "the strait." Detroit River is the name 
now usually given to the forest-bordered stream 
which makes a waterway for thousands of busy 
steamers plying between the cities of these great 
fresh- water seas. 

Your boat journeys on from Lake St. Clair to 
Lake Huron, and on through Michigan or Superior 
to whatever porti,t is bound. But as you pass the 
beautiful shores of Belle Isle in front of Detroit, 
you are attracted by the city, stretching nine 
miles along the river in the midst of splendid 
parks. 

Detroit is worth a visit. It is busy as well as 
beautiful. The government census gave the city a 
population of 465,766, in 1910; and according to 
the local count the number has been doubled in the 
following eight years. If you take an automobile 
ride along the wide boulevard which encircles the 
city, you may be able to discover why Detroit has 
grown so rapidly. 

A good place to start is at Belle Isle Bridge. At 

167 



168 Little Journeys in America 

first you pass grassy lawns shaded with elms and 
maples. There are pleasant-looking churches and 
schools. Fountains splash in the sunshine, flowers 
bloom in gorgeous masses, and birds flit about. In 
the distance is the blue water with huge freight 
boats, white steamers, and perhaps a shining 
sail. 

It seems a clean, homelike city, with its many 
handsome houses, its green parkings, and glowing 
beds of flowers. You pass the building of the 
Packard Motor Company, and you are minded that 
Detroit is an automobile city. It is the home of 
the luxurious "Packard" as well as the humble 
'Tord." "The Automobile City of the World," 
says your driver with justifiable pride. 

AUTOMOBILES AND PINS 

Thirty -five factories and over a hundred acces- 
sory plants send out a million and more cars a 
year. The 100,000 employees of these immense 
industries make a city in themselves. Some six 
hundred million dollars are invested, and many of 
the workmen are the highest paid mechanics in the 
world. It is estimated that Detroit provides more 
than half the world's supply of automobiles. 

You pass other motor factories, and the "Samari- 
tan Hospital," the "Nurses' Home," the "Thomas 
Normal Training School," the "Henry Ford 



Detroit, the Automobile City 169 



Hospital," the "La Salle Gardens" with splendid 
houses behind long avenues of poplars. You 
come again to the river front. But you have seen 
a few of the things which make Detroit a great 
industrial center. 

Over 12,000 people are employed in the stove 
factories. It has the largest wire-cloth industry 
and the largest pin factory in the world. Pins are 
manufactured here at the rate of 12,000,000 a day. 
A visit to this factory makes you wonder more than 
ever before where all of the lost pins go. 

Detroit is the first city in the world in the output 
of varnish and the first on the Great Lakes in the 
building of ships. The Pewabic Pottery Shops 
will repay your trouble if you have time to call. 
An artistic building with trees and grass about 
provides an appropriate setting for the making of 
beautiful vases, bowls, 
and other pieces of 
earthenware of dis- 
tinctive patterns. 

But the automobile 
industry dominates 
the place. The first 
successful "horseless 
carriage" was driven 
through the streets of „ ,, ,. . , , ^^ , , 

'-' topynght Underwood and Underwood 

Detroit in 1894, and The First Automobile 




170 Little Journeys in America 

the event introduced a new era for the city as 
well as a new invention for the world. 

It was an interesting pioneer, that first awkward, 
high-wheeled vehicle like a one-seated buggy, with 
the tongue wound up over the dashboard in 
the shape of a long-handled crank. The tame 
little "carriage" attained a speed of twenty miles 
an hour and was run by a gasolene motor of four 
cylinders. Charles B. King, its inventor, organized 
the King Motor Company, which today makes an 
eight-cylinder car. In 1896 Henry Ford brought 
out his first car. So Detroit not only started the 
automobile business but has kept it up. And now 
we are beginning to wonder what the world was 
like before there were any automobiles. 

BUILT LIKE A WHEEL 

It seems rather fitting that the greatest auto- 
mobile city should be built on the plan of a wheel. 
But this plan, of course, originated long before the 
automobiles. Detroit is like Washington in having 
its streets radiate from a hub. Its open plazas 
give a delightful sense of roominess. Its broad 
avenues and fine roads make it an excellent place 
to run automobiles as well as to make them. The 
city has over eight hundred miles of streets and 
many splendid country drives surrounding it. 

There are handsome and substantial business 



Detroit, the Automobile City 171 

and public buildings. The Wayne County build- 
ing at the east end of Cadillac Street and facing 
the City Hall is a five-storied structure covering 
over an acre. Its tower, gold dome, and bronze 
lantern are distinctive features. Above its classic 
arch you notice a relief representing General 
Anthony Wayne conferring with the Indians. 

The "Marine Post Office," a tug with a govern- 
ment flag afloat, is said to be the only institution 
of its kind in the world. It approaches passing 
freighters which do not make port here, and 
receives and distributes mail. The Detroit Ath- 
letic Club has a very handsome building, and on 
the corner of Jefferson and Hastings you find the 
Art Museum with a good collection of paintings 
and other art works. Then there is the new art 
center on Woodward Avenue. Down town there 
is an unusually fine Y.M.C.A. building with an 
automobile school in connection. 

THE CANOE TRAIL 

Although the automobile seems the native 
vehicle of Detroit, you should not leave the city 
in summer time without taking a boat ride or two. 
Indian canoes swept the waters of the strait and 
the surrounding lakes long before there was any 
Detroit, and the early settlers followed the Indian 
trails; by canoe and by sleighs or snowshoes, they 



172 Little Journeys in America 

traveled the water courses before roads were built. 

Now the city is one of our greatest inland ports. 
It commands the great waterways leading from 
a rich interior to a thickly settled coast region. It 
is before the break in the Appalachian Highlands, 
where the products of the West and Middle West, 
the North and the South, pour into trains and 
steamers for the coast cities or the distant world 
ports. It is said that more tonnage passes yearly 
through the Detroit River than through Liverpool, 
London, and Hamburg combined. 

Many pleasure boats also sail its fresh, cool 
waters. Loads of jolly picnic parties or summer 
tourists fill its steamers. From the foot of Wood- 
ward Avenue you may catch a boat for a trip to 
Belle Isle. And you may hire a canoe and thread 
the canals of this lovely wooded island and reach 
forest nooks that must be quite unchanged since 
the waters rippled to the stroke of the Indian or 
the pioneer white man. 

At places the canal widens into lakes dotted with 
tiny green islands. If you tire of the solitude of 
dense, lofty forests, there are the bath-houses, the 
Casino, the Zoo, and the Aquarium. Or you may 
hire a pony cart for a brisk trot around the smooth 
driveways. 

For excellent fishing you may take a motor- 
boat trip to The Flats, called the "Venice of 



Detroit, the Automobile City 173 

America"; or you may find splendid bass over at 
Put-in-Bay. There are many interesting trolley 
trips through the suburban parts, and other short 
trips by train which are full of interest. 



STIRRING PIONEER TIMES 

Though not one of our oldest cities, Detroit has 
a historic background with many high lights, as 
suggested by various landmarks around town. 
None is more appealing, perhaps, than the old 
French pear trees found along the earliest streets, 
and bearing fruit as vigorously as when they first 
lifted their boughs behind the Indian stockade. 
One of these veteran trees is nine feet in girth. 
There are also orchards of russet, snow, and other 
varieties of apples which the French settlers 
introduced. 

But though founded by the French, the city has 
not retained much of the French atmosphere. 
Settlers from Virginia, New England, and other 
eastern states have overshadowed the pioneer 
traits of the French. But the founders showed 
their mettle in more than one fierce encounter 
with Indians and English. 

You may visit the former home of Grant, a 
rather bleak two-story dwelling, now in the midst 
of the Italian quarter. It was occupied by Grant 



174 Little Journeys in America 

when he served here as a Heutenant from 1848 to 
1851. 

You may discover a tablet in the Art Museum 
dedicated *'To Madame de la Mo the Cadillac, the 
first white woman to land upon these shores." It 
was in July, 1701, that Cadillac arrived with a 
company of about a hundred soldiers, traders, and 
artisans to round the settlement. Two years later 
his wife braved the long wilderness journey from 
Quebec in order to be with her husband in this 
rude little village of men within its protecting 
palisades. 

Cadillac was a scholar as well as an officer and a 
knightly adventurer. It is said that his pen was 
as sharp as his sword. He started the town with 
wise caution which made it safe in a wilderness of 
more or less hostile Indians. There were rich 
loads of furs brought in from the north lands, and 
the French had been generous enough in their 
trading to win the friendship of the Indians; but 
when the English came to take possession of the 
post after the surrender of Quebec, the Indians 
were not pleased; and Pontiac resolved "to stand 
in the way" of these new proprietors. After the 
first years of settlement, Cadillac was made 
governor of Louisiana. 

Always a military post, Detroit had many lively 
skirmishes with the Indians before the country 



Detroit, the Automobile City 175 

surrounding it was finally settled. For five months 
the fort was beseiged by Pontiac and his warriors, 
who gave the garrison a severe beating at "Bloody 
Run," now largely covered with stove factories. 
The commanding officer was in favor of staying 
behind his stockades; but a new detachment was 
sent to relieve him, and this general insisted on 
sallying forth to meet the redskins. The English 
force was riddled, and the survivors were glad to 
escape to their fortifications. At last, so large a 
force was sent to reinforce the post that the 
Indians were frightened and withdrew. 

RISEN FROM THE ASHES 

Like San Francisco, Detroit was once wiped out 
by fire and recorded the fact in a motto of her 
seal: Resurget Cinerlbus, *'She has risen from the 
ashes." It was after the fire that the city was re- 
built on the plan of Washington, and narrow 
streets became broad avenues radiating from the 
Campus Martins. 

You leave Detroit with a pleasant memory of 
her homes and streets, and this in spite of the 
fact that she is a great industrial center and that 
her population is seventy per cent foreign. Her 
Poles, alone, number 100,000; and you may find 
solid sections of Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, 



176 Little Journeys in America 

Servians, Belgians, and Jews. These little foreign 
cities within the larger one seem to be becoming 
rapidly Americanized. They are building churches 
and schools and taking an interest in the great 
city's life. 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Grand Circus Park, Detroit 



The four large parks and many small squares, 
the broad streets, the trees and green parkings, 
and a spirit of prosperity give a favorable im- 
pression of Detroit. "Indian Village" is the name 
of a popular residence district out near Owen Park 
where one feels something of the city's special 
charm and friendliness. There is always a com- 
munity Christmas tree in the park, and the 



Detroit, the Automobile City 177 

"Indian Villagers" sing carols and place lighted 
candles in their windows on Christinas Eve. Across 
the river is a real Indian reservation where pretty 
birch-bark baskets are made. This strangely 
enough, is not called an Indian village at all. 



SAINT LOUIS, THE GREAT RIVER 
CITY 

'll rHEN Saint Louis, the largest city on the 
^ ^ largest river, was the center of a great inland 
water trade, hundreds of singing negroes used to 
work day and night loading and unloading the 
steamboats that crowded the wharf for three or 
four miles. Saint Louis is still the largest fur 
market in the world and makes a fifth of the shoes 
in the United States, but the glory of the old river 
trade has departed. 

If you should visit Saint Louis by steamer today 
you would notice the Eads bridge which spans the 
Mississippi fifty feet above high water and which 
has helped the railroads to rob the river of most 
of its early traffic. Two double steam railroad 
tracks and one for street cars, beside foot walks 
and a carriage way, cross this great bridge which 
saves Saint Louis a million dollars a year for 
transportation. 

The city is still a commercial center, as it was 
in the old French fur-trading days. Almost a 
hundred years before the Civil War, Laclede 
Liquest, a merchant of New Orleans, saw the 
opportunities of this location where the Missis- 
sippi joins the Missouri in the midst of a fertile 

178 



Saint Louis, the Great River City 179 

country. The founder was wise, too, in making 
friends with the Indians; and from the few log 
cabins which were built in 1764, a thriving settle- 
ment grew up in the wilderness that was then 
French territory. 

If you leave the river front and wander up town 
for a few blocks you may come upon the old market 
place where French, English, Indians, Spanish, and 
Portuguese met in the pioneer days and bartered 
skins and gold for grain, cotton, or manufactured 
products. The old market is now crowded with 
Missouri and Illinois farm produce and with fruit 
and nuts from Florida, Louisiana, and California. 

WHERE SLAVES WERE SOLD 

A little farther on is the dingy gray Court 
House from the steps of which slaves were sold 
during the early days. And still farther on, where 
the newer business section begins, we find the 
largest office building in the world. We might 
visit, too, in this mid-western city the world's 
largest lead works, brick works, drug house, 
shoe house, buggy factory, terra cotta works, 
street car plant, and wholesale paper house. At 
least, you find good authority in Saint Louis for 
these superlative establishments. 

Saint Louis has been called "the largest city 
entirely surrounded by the United States," and 



180 Little elourneys in America 



it seems there is no disputing this distinction. It 
lies in the center of our most productive farm 

region. So many con- 
ventions are held here 
that it has also been 
called "the assembly 
city." You might 
land in Saint Louis 
by twenty-seven dif- 
ferent railroads; and 
you would find one 
of the largest passen- 
ger depots through 
which millions of 
travelers pass every 

Olive Street Canyon, St. Louis 

YOU SHOULD VISIT SHAW'S GARDENS 

You would want to be sure to visit the Shaw 
Botanical Gardens of seventy-five acres which 
contain 11,000 specimens of plant life and are 
excelled only by the Royal Botanical Gardens of 
Kew, England. On a hot day you would enjoy 
a dip in one of the two great municipal swimming 
pools or a motor trip through the shady drives of 
Forest Park, the third largest park in America. 
In the park is the River des Peres and several 
lakes; and you find the stately figure of "Saint 



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Saint Louis, the Great River City 181 

Louis," mounted on his spirited steed high on 
the brow of Art Hill which overlooks the city and 
the river and wooded bluffs beyond. 

Back of this statue is the Art Museum, which 
was built for the World's Fair in 1904, and across 
the park you can see the beautiful, columned arch 
of the Jefferson Memorial. The city schools of 
Saint Louis are regarded as models; and Washing- 
ton University, at the edge of Forest Park, includes 
a most attractive group of buildings in a uniform 
style of architecture. At the great, open-air 
theater in a natural park ravine, one might see a 
performance of "Robin Hood" or some other wild- 
wood play with a real setting of forest trees, rustic 
bridges, and dancing green. 

You find some of the streets rather ugly and 
crowded where the city has spread over what were 
once the aristocratic residence sections. The old 
homes seem forlorn and out of place in their sordid 
or commercial surroundings. There are still 
picturesque remains of the old French districts; 
and one meets many Italians, Negroes, and other 
types in the tenement districts. Beautiful resi- 
dences with great flower gardens, shade trees and 
rose-bordered lawns are found along the parks and 
boulevards. But the early French atmosphere of 
the city has mostly vanished. 

A Eugene Field school building reminds us that a 



182 Little Journeys in America 

genial poet lived for many years in Saint Louis and 
wrote some of his best verse there as well as yards 
and yards of newspaper stories. Out along the 
Mississippi are picturesque bluffs and woodlands 
which recall the pictures we have had of old Saint 
Louis. All sorts of people came and went on this 
great water way. It was here that Mark Twain 
learned to steer a river boat and met many of the 
quaint and amusing characters and adventures 
which he afterwards wrote about. The oldest 
inhabitants still remember the Mark Twain days; 
and some of them speak of the river as "Mark's 
river," because he loved it and described it as 
nobody else has done. 

Saint Louis has been described by Winston 
Churchill in the "Crisis" and other novels, written 
from the author's own experiences in the old 
French river town. 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGHLANDS 
"T^OWN the deep-walled, winding trail of the 
-^-^ Royal Gorge, the train sweeps through the 
midst of the picturesque Rockies. Beside you 
the river leaps and boils with a wild, bubbling roar 
that drowns the noise of the engine. You seem 
to be running a losing race with the foaming brown 
waters that dance and curl below the giant cliffs 
towering 2,600 feet above you. In this Grand 
Canyon of the Arkansas you glimpse the heart of 
the great Western Highlands. 

Here are the splendid peaks, the massive ridges, 
the jutting precipices. Coming from the west over 
the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, you follow 
the river for miles through this deep and narrow 
pass. Here you are descending a lofty grade; but 
at length you mount again, trailing around abrupt 
angles with two or three huge engines ahead and 
another or two pushing. You may look out 
across a bold curve and watch the tail and head 
of your train threading the dizzy passes. 

Trees grow along the route where there is enough 
soil among the massive boulders. The fresh dry 
air is sweet with the odor of ferns and pines and 
mountain wild flowers. You pass great "castle 
rocks," turreted cathedrals of nature's building 

183 



184 Little Journeys in America 

that awe your soul with their silent majesty, here 
in the wildness of river and canyon. 

Descending the Royal Gorge at nightfall is a 
particularly thrilling experience. The waters are 
darkly boisterous and the depths grow steadily 
blacker as you near the lowest level. The huge 
walls tower beside you; the cliffs hang above; and 
up and up, at the very brink of the narrow chasm, 
the stars gleam. 

Lights flash here and there, making you feel that 
there are other human beings beside the tense 
passengers who are leaning with you at the open 
windows of the observation car. You really forget, 
in a way, the people and the train, as you drink in 
the almost diabolical grandeur of the mountain 
wildness, deep in its mystery of night and shadows 
and starlit peaks and rumbling waterfalls. The 
lights which you see are likely to be those of switch- 
tenders or camping road-builders. Towns and 
cabins are rare along this mountain trail. 

ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 
Beyond the Gorge, to the west, are other routes 
quite as beautiful if a shade less spectacular. You 
climb around lofty summits in some of the most 
daring and skilful curves which modern engineer- 
ing has achieved. You pass friendly little mining 
villages perched crazily among the cliffs. Up 



The Rocky Mountain Highlands 185 

beyond the timber-line you go, where the air is 
sharp with frost; and you look down from a splen- 
did barren "roof of the world" to the green pines in 
the sheltering canyons. On one of these routes in 
central Colorado you pass the same little mining 
town five times on your spiral ascent. The last 
time it is far below you, and the first time you were 
below it. 

From Denver you may ride "Around the Circle," 
a scenic trip which crosses and recrosses the Con- 
tinental Divide, threading the famous canyons and 
mounting the towering passes over the tops of the 
Rocky ranges and returning in a thousand mile 
circuit to the "Queen City of the Plains." You 
may pass mines of gold and silver yielding ore 
worth millions of dollars, and you will doubtless 
pass unexplored riches worth millions more. 

There are many attractive inns and mountain 
camps where you may stop for more leisurely 
enjoyment of the unsurpassed scenery, the bracing 
air, the fun of horseback riding and motoring in the 
heart of the wilds. Clear brooks trickle over the 
brightest of pebbles; furry little animals and per- 
haps furry big ones meet you in these mountain 
walks ; about you the pines spread thick carpets of 
needles; and above you the clouds float, touching 
the tops of the glistening snow-white peaks. 

North of Leadville, Colorado, a giant white 



186 Little Journeys in America 

cruciform marks the "Mountain of the Holy 
Cross." Two great snow-filled ravines which 
interesect at right angles form the cross, which 
may be seen for hours as your train swings east 
toward Colorado Springs. At Hagerman Pass the 
railroad crosses the Continental Divide at an ele- 
vation of 11,530 feet. 

On the flanks of the mountains and in the pro- 
tected valleys there are stretches of grazing land; 
and irrigation canals have been constructed, some- 
times utilizing all the available water in the 
streams. Though the rainfall is light there are 
plateau regions with enough grass for extensive 
stock ranches. With a little irrigation and careful 
dry farming some of these regions are made very 
productive. Laramie Plains, Wyoming, is one of 
the best grazing districts in the country. 

MANY HEALTH RESORTS 
Health resorts are frequent all through the 
Rocky Mountain region, as the high dry air is 
exceedingly favorable for lung trouble. Here you 
realize the extent of the "great white plague," for 
tuberculosis patients from all over the world crowd 
the sanitariums and tent cities. Before the disease 
has too much weakened its victims, they flood the 
towns with applications for work. Thousands of 
people are able to live in this altitude, who would 



The Rocky Mountain Highlands 187 

soon die in the low damp climate of the eastern 
coast. 

There are many "arrested cases," the disease 
having been checked so that with careful attention 
the patient may live comfortably and happily for 
many years, perhaps a normal lifetime. There is 
pathos in this struggle against disease ; for although 
"T.B." exiles may laugh bravely at their fate, they 
are often homesick and lonely. 

Perhaps it is this phase of his life which makes 
the Rocky Mountain westerner more friendly and 
thoughtful of his neighbors than is almost any 
other person in the world. The vastness and isola- 
tion of the country may also have something to do 
with the kindliness of the inhabitants. But what- 
ever the cause, the people are notably generous to 
anyone in trouble, and they surprise the stranger 
with delightful little courtesies, which the busy 
easterners are likely to forget or to reserve for 
intimate friends only. 

YOU ARE WELCOME IN DENVER 
Denver is a mecca for thousands of tourists. A 
great bronze arch bidding you "Welcome" spans 
the street before the station. The city has adver- 
tised her climate and her charms so effectively that 
her vast hotels are filled and her long railway depot 
is crowded. Denver and the surrounding towns 



188 Little Journeys in America 

and camps have become a great summer play- 
ground. With the rolHng, treeless prairies before 
her and the jagged, snow-capped mountain wall at 
her back, the city is impressively situated. 

You will meet all sorts of people in the broad 
streets and pretty, open squares. Ranchmen and 
miners ride down from the mountains on long- 
necked cow-ponies; invalids or pleasure-seekers 
crowd the hotels. There is much long-distance 
motoring through this part of the country, and the 
fine art of camping is appreciated and practiced. 

You may enjoy the best plays in Denver, though 
not so frequently as in a less isolated city. Elitch's 
Garden is gay in summer with its charming res- 
taurant and playhouse in the midst of an old apple 
orchard. There are long shady paths under the 
trees and "apple-blossom time" at Elitch's is a 
rare little paradise. You find beautiful parks in 
Denver, vivid green in the midst of the arid coun- 
try, and handsome brick and stone buildings. The 
handsome state capitol stands on a high hill. 

Denver is a new city. The old stage driver who 
takes you for some motor side trip can recall the 
days when he hunted deer in what is now the city 
park. He may tell you of dusty emigrant wagons 
trailing one of the busy streets which was then the 
old Santa Fe Trail. He remembers the pack trains 
of loaded mules that toiled in from the distant 



The Rocky Mountain Highlands 189 

mountain camps with ore, and returned twenty- 
five miles through the snow with the winter's 
supply of bacon and coffee and flour. 

The old stage driver is proud of Denver; and so 
are the many others who have come from east or 
south to make their homes here. It is a charming 
little city; it has the western spirit of pluck and 
pride which downs all sorts of obstacles. It is a 
gay little city, too, in spite of its sanitariums. It 
likes to call itself "The Paris of America." 

UP PIKE'S PEAK 

South from Denver on the way to Colorado 
Springs you pass Casa Blanca, a huge white rock, 
1,000 feet long and 200 feet high. About six miles 
westward you. reach Pike's Peak, the famous 
summit rising from the Colorado front range to a 
snow-capped height of nearly 14,200 feet. By a 
cog-wheeled railway you may ascend to the small 
hotel on top and view the mountains, glens, and 
mining camps for miles around. Below you are 
forests of pine and oak, and some of the mineral 
springs for which the region is noted ; but the peak 
is bare rocks, usually snow-covered. 

Through the romantic Ute Pass, used for cen- 
turies by Indian travelers, you may reach the 
"Garden of the Gods" with its grotesque figures of 
red sandstone huddled about you like queer, silent 



190 Little Journeys in America 




giants. A road winds through the narrow gateway 
between two huge crimson boulders over 300 feet 

high. The "Garden" 
is about a mile square 
and is filled with these 
unique, wind -carved 
monsters. 

Farther south is 
Pueblo, with its great 
mineral palace of 
twen ty - eight domes 
into which are worked 
specimens of all the 
Colorado minerals. 
Westward beyond the 
Veta Pass is the abrupt "Mule Shoe Curve"; and 
beyond this is the San Luis, the most extensive of 
Colorado Parks which is 6,000 square miles. 
Here the triple-peaked Sierra Blanca sentinels you 
from the west. It is the loftiest Colorado moun- 
tain and rises 14,500 feet. 

ALONG THE OLD MORMON TRAIL 
Farther west, in the center of the Rockies is the 
Great Basin of Utah and Salt Lake, eighty miles 
long and from thirty to fifty miles wide. No fish 
can live in this briny pool, except an ugly little 
shrimp that looks as if it might live anywhere. 



Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs 



The Rocky Mountain Highlands 191 

You would find a bath in the lake a novel experi- 
ence, for the density of the water is so great that 
you float around in a very bouyant, light-headed 
fashion. You couldn't sink if you tried. The salt- 
ness of the water varies from 14 to 42 per cent as 




Pikes Peak — "The Monument of the Continent" 

the lake is high or low. When you remember that 
the salt of the ocean is only three or four per cent, 
you realize how briny this lake is. It is supposed to 
contain hundreds of millions of tons of salt. 

To this desert country Brigham Young led his 
Mormon colony of 142 people by the long weary 




Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Scene in Yellowstone Park 



The Rocky Mountain Highlands 193 

trek across plains and mountains from Illinois, 
here they built the city of Salt Lake, the irrigated 
gardens, and the immense walled temple of granite 
which took forty years to complete. Here too, is 
the huge Mormon tabernacle, and pleasant homes 
and business streets. But around the city stretch 
the barren plains and mountains and the white 
snow-beds and shores of old salt lakes. The sun 
glows gorgeously over desert and mountains, but 
you feel lonely and shut in by the vast desolation. 
In Wyoming are still some of the mammoth 
cattle ranches; and at Cheyenne the annual 
"Frontier Days" is a great event, rehearsing the 
old rough-riding and lariat tricks of the early cow- 
boys, who drove cattle over the plains from the 
Yellowstone to Old Mexico. Some of these dashing 
horsemen are still at large, with a little smaller 
range than in the old days and minus some of the 
picturesque trappings that one usually sees accom- 
panying cowboys in the movies. 

WHERE THE LARGEST ANIMALS LIVED 

[ Fantastic buttes, or water- worn mounds, and the 
hanging rock in Echo Gorge are interesting. Wyo- 
ming has produced more skeletons of enormous, 
prehistoric beasts than any other state. Not long 
ago, the skeleton of a huge beast whose foot covered 
a square yard' was unearthed. The same mighty 



194 Little Journeys in America 

force which upheaved the Rocky Mountains tilted 
the rock beds of these ancient monsters so that the 
wearing of winds and waters would sometime bring 
them to light. 

The world seems rather youthful and very gigan- 
tic in the Rocky Mountain Highlands. When the 
scientists dig up a colossal dinosaur, the largest 
animal ever discovered on the earth, it gives us a 
little thrill of contact with the ages ; and the world 
seems still more gigantic and very interesting, even 
though we seem to dwindle to mere specks among 
the rocks and the centuries. 

It makes one feel the need of human companion- 
ship to travel these lonely wilds ; and it makes him 
forget some of his littleness and pettiness to view 
these towering mountains and to sit for a while 
with the silent, eerie figures in the great "Garden of 
the Gods." 

The Rocky Mountain Highlands lead in the 
production of gold, silver, copper, lead, iron. They 
also export cattle, wheat, lumber, salt, borax, and 
sulphur. 



THE GREAT SOUTHWEST 
T^REEDOM and hospitality, blue skies, purple 
"*■ mesas and sweeping, sunlit plains await the 
traveler in the fascinating summer land of the 
American Southwest. It is the land of painted 
deserts, or gorgeous sunsets, and cool, pine-scented 
canyons. 

At first sight, it may seem barren and lonely; 
but a subtle fascination grows with a closer 
acquaintance. There is a fine spirit of adventure 
and comradeship around its mountain camp fires 
and along its desert trails. Even in the fleeting 
glimpse which one gets from a car window, there is 
the thrill of adventure which belongs to great 
spaces as yet hardly explored. 

As the train toils westward from the broad 
grazing lands of Texas and Oklahoma, the traveler 
observes a subtle but steady change in the land- 
scape coloring. The gray-green of the cattle 
ranches gives place to a tawny yellow-brown in the 
more arid plains of eastern New Mexico, and the 
towns grow continually farther and farther apart. 

There are still scattered farm houses with their 
protecting cotton-woods or willows and their 
patches of green irrigated land. But these grow 
fewer as you travel farther west. Bleached wooden 

195 



196 Little Journeys in America 

shacks stand alone in the wind-swept, dry -farming 
regions ; and there are miles and miles with no sign 
of a human dwelling. Fat, yellow-brown prairie 
dogs, a loping coyote, weird little prairie owls, or 
slim, jSashing lizards may be detected in the tawny, 
treeless plains if you have sharp eyes for these 
earth-colored creatures. 

This increasing yellow-brownness is the desert 
color; and it puts its mark upon everything — soil, 
vegetation, and even animal life. It is the pre- 
vailing note in the vast, half -arid stretches of our 
great Southwest. In the short rainy season about 
July or August there may be delicate veils of 
green over the semi-aridness ; but as one travels on, 
this transient freshness disappears in the golden 
mesa country of western New Mexico and Arizona. 
The irrigated orchards and gardens are less and less 
frequent; and the glowing plains stretch on and on, 
broken by flat, sand-colored mountains or the 
crouching, ridgelike mesas. 

HOT WINDS AND BLINDING SKIES 

The sky is a blinding turquoise blue, and the 
wind grows hotter and is often sharp with the sting 
of sand. Windows are closed as the train nears the 
heart of the desert country, but the sand sifts in at 
every crack and crevice. Electric fans whir, and 
shades are drawn to keep out the blinding light. 



The Great Southwest 197 

Sometimes the thermometer registers 130° ; but 
it is a high, dry heat and is no more oppressive to 
most people than 90° or 100° would be in a low, 
moist climate. 

There are occasional Mexican huts of yellow 
adobe, and groups of Mexicans wave and call from 
their flat-car homes beside the track. Sometimes a 
lone automobile is passed, speeding along the motor 
trail which runs parallel with the railroad. But 
signs of life are rare, for the most part, after you 
reach the real desert. An occasional hawk or 
buzzard hangs in the shimmering blue; and giant 
cacti lift their stiff, thorny branches like grotesque 
skeletons of vegetation. 

At the gray cement stations are sun-browned 
men and women with wide-brimmed hats. Many 
trains stop for meals at these desert towns ; and the 
sound of tom-toms beating merrily greets you as a 
summons to the lunch counter or the dining room 
of the famous Harvey eating houses. At iVlbuquer- 
que, New Mexico and Needles, Arizona, there is 
always a group of Indians in bright-colored native 
dress with strings of beads and baskets of pottery. 
They crowd around the train and hold up their 
gaudy wares to sell. Some of them can speak only 
a few words of English, but they have learned to 
count money and drive a good bargain. . 

Wrinkled old men and women carry great ropes 
of bead necklaces or armfuls of pottery; and young 



198 Little Journeys in America 

girls smile and chatter and beg you to buy the ugly 
little rain gods which tourists like as souvenirs. 
Some of the Indian work is very beautiful and 
interesting, but many of the things brought to the 
trains are cheap and insincere. They have been 
made to supply the taste of commercial buyers and 
do not represent the true art of the Indian with its 
unique symbolism and originality of design. But 
the Indians now have a taste for the white man's 
money, and summer and winter they tramp the 
desert trail to meet the train with its curious 
eastern travelers. 

WHITE DRIFTS OF SAND 

In some parts of Arizona the sand is almost as 
white as snow and lies along the track in huge 
drifts, continually shifted about by the hot winds. 
Most of the soil is exceedingly productive when 
watered, and the splendid possibilities of irrigation 
have only begun to be realized. Fruit ranches and 
gardens become more frequent as one passes into 
Southern California, where the soil and the climate 
are much the same as in Arizona. 

Interesting spots to visit in the Southwest are 
the Grand Canyon of Arizona with its gorgeous 
color and picturesque cliffs and chasms; the 
Indian villages of the Pueblos ; the ancient ruins of 
the prehistoric "Cliff -Dwellers" ; and Santa Fe, 



The Great Southwest 199 

which was for 300 years the capitol of a vast 
domain once described as extending from the 
Mississippi to the Pacific and from Chihuahua to 
the unknown north. 

In fact any of the older towns are full of historic 
interest and have the romantic charm of the old 
Spanish-Indian civilization which is gradually 
giving way to a more enterprising spirit of northern 
industry. But much of the sparselysettled region 
comprising New Mexico, Arizona, and southern 
Nevada is still "the land of tomorrow"; where 
brown-skinned Mexicans live in little adobe vil- 
lages, cultivating little garden patches, and laugh- 
ing and dreaming beside their adobe walls. 

The Mexicans are a friendly, childlike people, 
likeable in spite of their shiftless ways and their 
occasional lawlessness. From Spanish ancestors 
they have inherited a fondness for music and 
dancing, and their love of the out-of-doors is a 
trait common to both Spaniards and Indians. 

PICTURESQUE SANTA FE 

At Santa Fe there is the old Palace of the 
Governors, used during the early Spanish period as 
a capitol and executive mansion. Its thick walls 
bear the scars of early conflicts when it was a 
government fortress and the people of Santa Fe 
gathered for safety in its inclosed patio. The 



200 Little Journeys in America 

palace now serves as a museum for New Mexico's 
historic and archeological collections. It faces the 
shaded plaza, where a simple stone monument 
marks the end of the old Santa Fe Trail. 

To the west is the new art museum built in 
Spanish-Indian architecture to harmonize with the 
old Palace and with other quaint buildings in the 
narrow streets. Up the avenue is San Miguel, said 
to be the oldest church in the United States. It 
contains Spanish altar paintings which have been 
pierced by Indian arrows when the pictures were 
carried by a procession of monks who were fired 
upon in the early, dangerous days. 

The Kit Carson monument in front of the Fed- 
eral building recalls thrilling pioneer tales. There 
are orchards of apple and pear and peach trees 
planted by the Franciscan friars when Santa Fe 
was, in fact as in name, the City of the Holy Faith 
of Saint Francis of Assisi. There are crooked, 
picturesque streets with brown adobe walls where 
you meet black-shawled Mexican women, brown, 
half -naked children, and perhaps a stalwart Indian 
in his native blanket and moccasins. 

One of these streets is called Burro Alley because 
so many Mexican wood-carriers drive their laden 
donkeys along the way and often leave them to 
pick a scanty meal while their owners are dining in 
one of the native restaurants or chatting in the 



The Great Southwest 201 

plaza. The wood is gathered from the juniper and 
pifion-covered slopes of the mountains and can- 
yons. 

About ninety miles from Santa Fe is the old town 
of Taos, where a colony of painters from New York 
and other cities are now living and painting the 
Indians and the colorful New Mexico landscape. 
Near the village are the two best preserved Pueblos 
or community houses in which about 600 Pueblo 
Indians now live in much the same manner as their 
ancestors were living when the Spanish explorers 
under the leadership of Cabeza de Vaca came upon 
them in 1546. 

The pueblos are of unknown age and are beauti- 
ful specimens of primitive architecture. Ladders 
lead to the flat, terraced roofs; and round clay 
ovens are built outside the walls where the Indian 
women bake their bread made of corn meal. The 
Indians still hold some of their ceremonial dances 
here, and in September the annual San Jeronimo 
races occur and are attended by hundreds of white 
people as well as Indians. Parts of the ancient 
walls which surrounded these community dwellings 
still remain though the Indians have long lived in 
peace and have been spared the danger of attacks 
from wandering plain tribes. Corn, beans, 
squashes, and fruit are raised on the reservation 
farms. 



202 Little Journeys in America 



TO THE CLIFF DWELLINGS 

Just off the dusty Taos Plaza is the old home of 
Kit Carson, a simple adobe structure with a rude 
porch and deep, brown walls. The whole town is a 
cluster of picturesque Mexican houses surrounded 
by the green valley of the Rio Grande, a half -arid 
plateau, and the glowing ranges called "The Blood 
of Christ Mountains" by the old Spanish priests. 




Copyright Underuvod and Underwood 



Cliff Dwellers 



Taos is twenty -five miles from the nearest rail- 
road and is reached from Taos Junction by a rnotor 
stage, which trail;s through the precipices of the 
Rio Grande Canyon, the towering cliff walls far 



The Great Southwest 203 

above and the river splashing over its falls below. 
It is a wild hair-raising route, but it gives you a 
glimpse of the coolness and greenness which is 
found in some of the mountain forests and canyons 
even in arid New Mexico. 

Canyon de Los Frijoles, meaning "canyon of the 
beans," contains some of the most interesting ruins 
of prehistoric cliff dwellings. It is thirty -five miles 
from Santa Fe. On the face of an almost per- 
pendicular cliff are the tiny, celllike houses, cut 
into the walls and reached only by ladders. A 
huge shelf of the cliff is honeycombed by these 
rooms and contains also a kiva or ancient cere- 
monial cave where many of the religious dances 
were performed. 

In this balcony and in the almost inaccessible 
cliffs, smaller and more peaceful Indian tribes 
doubtless sought refuge from their warlike ene- 
mies. Their location had the advantage of a 
natural fortress from which stones and arrows could 
be hurled upon any intruders. One little walled 
city lies in the very bottom of the canyon, near the 
stream which comes dashing down among the rocks 
and pines. The ruins of this city show only one 
entrance, suggesting again the necessity for pro- 
tection from hostile neighbors. 

Old ruins and cities are being excavated all 
through this region by the School of American 



204 Little Journeys in America 

Archeology at Santa Fe. Interesting and almost 
unexplored ruins are found in the great forest 
reserves of the upper Gila. Here the dense native 
timber and the clear mountain streams form a 
striking contrast to the great tracts of arid, treeless 
land. 

OLD MISSION CHURCHES 

Old mission churches are scattered throughout 
this country and indicate the tireless zeal of the 
early Spanish priests. These buildings are almost 
as simple as the Indian pueblos. They also are of 
adobe and were built by Indian workmen under the 
direction of the Spaniards. Indian women and 
children did much of the work on these ancient 
churches. It was not considered a man's business 
to "build walls." 

Phoenix, Arizona, is a delightful wintering place, 
with palms and other tropical vegetation such as 
one finds in southern California. The state uni- 
versity here has done much to arouse interest in 
the history and the archeology of the Southwest. 

Instead of the oil wells, which are making for- 
tunes in Texas and Oklahoma, there are great cop- 
per mines, probably the richest in the world, in the 
mountains of New Mexico. Fruit and alfalfa are 
grown in the fertile Pecos valley where Artesian 
wells provide water for irrigation. Cattle and 



The Great Southwest 205 

sheep are raised throughout the Southwest. The 
high altitude of Santa Fe and other cities of 
the Great-Divide-region prevents the extreme heat 
which might be expected in this latitude. The 
American Southwest is probably the greatest health 
resort in the world. Cool nights, clear and invigor- 
ating days, and the freedom of vast unpeopled 
plains and mountains are fascinating features of, 
this land of sunny skies. 



THE PACIFIC SLOPE 

\/'0U leave San Diego, the oldest and perhaps 
-*■ the most picturesque of California cities, with 
many vivid memory pictures of the quaint Spanish 
streets, beautiful homes and gardens, and the 
charming old Mission, where the early padres 
made friends and followers of thousands of Cali- 
fornia Indians. 

Twenty-one of these Missions are scattered 
along the coast, a day's journey apart; and many 

were the travelers 
who found welcome 
here when these 
homes of the Fathers 
were the only inns 
which the wilderness 
afforded. The red- 
towered Coronado, 
advertised as the 
"largest resort hotel 
in the world" forms a 
striking contrast to 
the simple half -primi- 
tive missions built by 

San Gabriel Mission . ^ t i • i 

the Indians and 
priests. The Coronado accomodates more than a 




206 



The Pacific Slope 207 

thousand guests at a time and never seems crowded. 
Its peninsula site commands the ocean's thunder 
on a long sandy beach, and its tropical gardens 
bloom in a climate of perpetual summer time. No 
frost, no heat, but tumbling, sunlit waves, brilliant 
flowers of countless varieties, and brilliant .birds in 
their great open-air cage. 

A motor trip from San Diego to San Francisco 
gives you an idea of the color and contour of this 
famous state of the Golden West. You find 
burning deserts, blossoming hills and valleys, 
snow-clad mountains, redwood foriests, and con- 
tinual glimpses of the violet-blue Pacific beyond 
avenues of palm trees or the gray green of olive 
groves. 

Before leaving San Diego you may want to run 
down to the barren border of Old Mexico, a few 
miles south; and you will, of course, visit Point 
Loma with its graceful, sinuous length and its 
old stone lighthouse at the north of San Diego 
harbor. Here the bay gleams like a vast opal in 
the midst of green hills. Range after range, the 
mountains stretch away in a shimmer of soft 
haze, and the city lies basking in the sunlight. 

You may find it hard to leave the dreamlike 
beauty of this old southern town, but flower- 
banked, palm-bordered roads beckon you on. If 
you choose a time between the middle of May and 



208 Little Journeys in America 

November for your motor trip you are quite 
certain of good weather; for this is the dry season 
in CaHfornia, and the sun glows golden over the 
purple mountains, the opal sea, the flaming poppy 
fields, and the orange and lemon orchards. May- 
time is a magic season of birds and bloom in 
southern California. 

The motor purrs down a long white drive beside 
the sea and beyond to the distant hills and moun- 
tains. You are on King's Highway, with the 
silver blue ocean beside you, the gold blue sky 
overhead, and the lure of the open road before 
you with its promise of adventures strange and 
new. Wind-swept pines cling crouching at the 
edge of lofty headlands, and there are gum and 
acacia trees, and gnarled cypresses hundreds, and 
perhaps thousands of years old. The tossing 
white spray creeps up the beach, lifting the shells 
and seaweed and lapping the yellow and pink 
sand flowers— queer little blossoms of wax and 
silk. 

Winding into the highlands, the road skirts 
patches of yellow mustard and lavender wild 
radish. In the desert foothills are cacti and dwarf 
cedar. Bluebells, lilies, primroses, and dahlias 
star the wide meadows and the grassy glens. 
Pink verbenas gleam along the beaches, and 
poppies spread their flaming orange boldly across 
the desert rim. 



The Pacific Slope 209 

WITHIN GRAY WALLS 

You will find homelike inns where you may 
spend the night with your windows opening on 
the sea. And you may want to sit for an hour in 
the fascinating patio gardens with a flood of moon- 
light that makes you think of the Arabian Nights. 
South of Los Angeles is the Mission of San Juan 
Capistrano, one of the most beautiful of these 
interesting establishments which represent the 
earnest labors of the devoted Spanish priests. 

Capistrano 's time-browned arches are now 
curtained with vines, and roses which clamber 
along the red-tiled roofs and moss-green walls. 
In the cloistered court you seem to enter a world 
of long-forgotten peace and romance. A slim 
brown Mexican girl places flowers on the ancient 
altar. From behind the chapel comes the sonorous 
chanting of Latin prayers by the dark-eyed priest. 
The padre welcomes you with gentle courtesy. 
With his long brown robe and sandaled feet, he 
might have stepped out of an old high-prowed 
Spanish galleon. But he shows you the marks 
of time in the ancient mission, the shattered walls 
of his sadly ruined church. 

Roses are young as spring in the cloistered 
patio; but the bits of plaster falls from the old 
church walls; the stone steps are worn; and the 
pillars are crumbling. Over a century and a half 



210 Little Journeys in America 

have passed since the bells of Capistrano first 
rang their call to prayer in this alien land. Beauti- 
ful silver candlesticks adorn the sanctuary. There 
are quaint carvings and decorations, crude old 
statues and paintings. 

In the library are illumined books, the work of 
patient monks, signed only with the words "Laus 




Citrus Orchard, near Los Angeles 



Deo." Ten years after the mission's founding, 
in 1776, there were over five hundred Indians 
under the care of the padres. They learned the 
cruder industrial arts from the Spaniards and new 
methods of agriculture. And they learned to 
reverence their alien teachers. 



The Pacific Slope 211 

ROSE GARDENS AND ORANGE GROVES 

Orange, lemon, and walnut groves line much of 
the road about Los Angeles. There are also grain 
fields, long tracts of lima beans, and many Japanese 
truck gardens. Up the San Fernando Valley- 
are olive and apricot orchards, and occasionally a 
mill where olive oil is made. Roses nod along the 
roadways until you enter the canyons, where 
great oaks form an arch overhead. You drop 
swiftly down the Santa Clara Valley with a mag- 
nificent view of hills and mountains. 

Purple and gold in the distance and now and 
then a shimmering mirage make this seem an 
enchanted fairy -land. Here are tall eucalyptus 
trees, shedding their fragrant yellow bark and 
clinging firmly to their hard green leaves. Grace- 
fully drooping pepper trees with clusters of creamy 
flowers and bright berries border the road in spicy, 
luxuriant green. About Ventura are thousands 
of acres of lima beans and sugar beets, and there 
are still orange and lemon groves and dusty fig 
trees. Toward Santa Barbara you pass exquisite 
woodland nooks and hills purple with wild lilac 
bloom. 

A MAMMOTH GRAPE VINE 
Near Santa Barbara you find a mammoth 
grape vine, ten feet in trunk circumference, with 



212 Little Journeys in America 

brandies covering a trellis a hundred feet square. 
Fourteen tons of grapes have been gathered from 
this vine in a single season, and one cluster some- 
times weights twelve pounds. The vine is said 
to have been planted in 1809, and it looks as if it 
were likely to live a hundred or so years more. 

As the road winds on along the coast you notice 
huge oil derricks standing in the water. They 
pump the oil from wells beneath the surface of the 
ocean. Santa Barbara is one of the most beautiful 
and popular of Pacific Coast resorts. Handsome 
hotels are here and a superb view. The Santa 
Barbara Mission is one of the best known of the 
chain which links gardens and desert and moun- 
tains and forests along the sunset slope. Here are 
mission bells two hundred years old; a cemetery 
with many rare plants and shrubs; and the 
secluded garden of the inner court, which an 
ancient order forbids any woman to enter unless 
she be the "reigning queen." It is said that Mrs. 
Benjamin Harrison was once admitted to the 
garden as eligible under the provision of the old 
Franciscan rule. 

On to Monterey you find a picturesque route — 
more missions, gnarled cypresses, flaming poppies, 
geraniums, roses, and an old adobe hotel where 
Robert Louis Stevenson once lived. Of the scene 
about you, this lover of the sea wrote: 



The Pacific Slope 213 

*'No other coast have I enjoyed so much in all 
weather— such a spectacle of ocean's greatness, 
such beauty of changing color, and so much 
thunder in the sound — -as at Monterey." 

Weird, wind-blown cypresses fringe the coast 
and floating kelp makes patches of royal purple 
in the dark blue bay. You may have high winds 
along this route, days when the sand whips your 
face and beats unmercifully at your eyelids. But 
you always press on with a kind of gipsy joy in 
the wildness of the tugging gale. Near Monterey 
is the charming little village of Carmel-by-the- 
Sea, a haunt of artists and writers. 

Beyond, you come upon vast orchards of cherry, 
apple and prune, deliciously fragrant at blossom 
time. You may visit great out-door canneries or 
fruit-packing houses somewhere along this route 
almost every season of the year. At Vera Cruz 
you meet the giant redwoods. A few miles north 
of the town is a grove of eight hundred trees. 

The largest of this group is twenty-two feet in 
diameter and three hundred and six feet high. 
One fire-hollowed monster provided a house for 
General Freemont when he camped here in 1848. 
You feel a thrill of awe and delight at these stately, 
lifting trunks; at the lofty boughs towering above 
you into the shining, cloud-flecked sky. To one 
who loves trees, no experience can ever quite 
parallel his first walk under the redwoods. 



214 Little Journeys in America 



WHERE EARTHQUAKES ARE MEASURED 
Beyond the majestic giants are pines, oaks, 
birches, and sycamores, with the occasional red 
glow of the madrona. At San Jose is Lick Observa- 
tory at the top of Mount Hamilton, which you may 
motor up. Among the interesting instruments 
in the observatory building is the great refracting 
telescope through which visitors are allowed to 
look, on Saturday evenings only. 

Another interesting device is the sensitive 
seismograph for recording earthquakes, which 
are very plentiful in this neighborhood. The 
guide will tell you that hardly a day passes without 

its quake, usually so 
slight that you would 
not notice it. As long 
as the shocks occur 
regularjy, there is 
little to fear; but an 
entire absence of 
tremors for several 
days is likely to be 
followed by a violent 
quake. 

Northward the road 
leads you to San 

CopyriglH Underwood and Underwood _ rranClSCO and tUC 

Scene in Yosemite Park SplcudorS of the Gold- 




The Pacific Slope 215 

en Gate. After this long motor trip you will 
doubtless prefer a boat or train to take you to 
the mountains and forests of Washington and Ore- 
gon. And you will realize that you have skimmed 
only the merest edge of the vast Pacific Slope. 
Back of the coast ranges are the falls of 
the great Yosemite, the glories of the Feather 
River Canyon, the wonders of Lake Tahoe, and 
the white gloom of Death Valley. Back in the 
mountains also are California's vast stores of gold, 
silver, quicksilver, lead, zinc, and copper. Pe- 
troleum has become an important product. Cali- 
fornia oil is used for locomotives as far north as 
Washington and Alaska, and has replaced coal on 
Puget Sound. 

TO NORTHERN CANYONS AND CEDARS 

But you are bound for the north and the cedars 
and lakes of the other Pacific Slope states. You 
find the coast of northern California narrowing 
to a high rocky wall which faces the sea with hardly 
a break after the San Francisco Bay. At the head 
of the Sacramento River Canyon are the snow- 
crowned Mount Shasta and the parks and lakes of 
the high Sierras. In western Oregon are fir-lined 
hills, lofty peaks, and the mighty gorges of the 
Snake River. The mild moist climate favors 
wheat and other cereals; and the mines produce 



216 Little Journeys in America 

a great variety of metals including gold, silver, 
copper, and platinum. East of the Cascade 
ranges which cut Oregon and Washington in two, 
there are less rainfall and consequently less 
luxuriant forest and other vegetation. But farms 
are made productive with a little irrigation. 





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A Typical Home, Portland, Oregon 

You find Portland a great seaport, though 
fifty miles inland; for its docks are connected with 
the Columbia River which is navigatable for four 
hundred miles. Beyond the city is Mount Hood, 
a cone-shaped, snow-clad peak rising majestically 
from the river bank and the green of firs and pines. 
Portland is a beautiful spot with trim streets. 



The Pacific Slope 217 

blossoming rose gardens and Colonial houses 
which make you think of New England. Here 
roses bloom the year round, and you may gather 
home-grown strawberries in October. Shops and 
office buildings are busy; and lumber and wheat 
vessels crowd the wharves. 

Seattle, Washington's largest city, is splendidly 
located on Puget Sound. A spirit of alert enter- 
prise pervades this port with its sea trade with 
Alaska and the Orient. Back of the city are high 
ridged hills and a chain of beautiful lakes. Only 
nineteen miles distant are the Snoqualmie Falls 
with their wild plunge of 270 feet. And along 
the mountain slopes are some of the most beauti- 
ful forests in the world. 

A clean, rain-washed appearance distinguishes 
the luxuriant forests of Washington and Oregon, 
which are often almost impenetrable on account 
of the rank underbush. Vines hang from lofty 
tree tops, moss spreads its green velvet over fallen 
trunks and across rocks and branches. Wild 
flowers spangle the vivid green with spots of color, 
and birds flash their bright plumage through 
sunlit vistas. 

"THE MOUNTAIN THAT WAS GOD" 

Green and fragrant, with stately gray trunks, 
the trees whirl past your train windows. They 



218 Little Journeys in America 

glisten rich and feathery in the sunKght, or they 
are dim and darkly mysterious in veils of clinging 
fog. Douglas fir, spruce, giant cedar, and western 
hemlock, with sometimes a slender aspen grove or a 
ghostly clump of birches: they are green temples 
of magnificent beauty, musical at the slightest 
touch of the wind. Washington has been called 
the "Evergreen State" because of her verdant 
forests. 

There is the clean sweet smell of lumber in these 
temperate northlands, and there are salmon and 
halibut fisheries and vast fields of oats and wheat 
and barley. There are splendid orchards of apple 
and plum and prune and delicious wild berries 
as well as tame ones. 

The cities are noted for their fine public schools. 
The University of Oregon at Eugene, and the 
University of Washington at Seattle are prominent 
among higher educational institutions. 

Near Tacoma you may visit the glacier of Mt. 
Rainier, or Mt. Tacoma, as it is called by the people 
of the town. It is an impressive spectacle, tower- 
ing in icy solitude above the forests and the sea. 
With the help of skilled guides you may cross the 
dangerous crevasses of this river of ice and 
follow its steep trails to the lofty summit. From 
there you may gaze down with the air of a con- 
querer, or a discoverer, over the city, the moun- 



The Pacific Slope 



219 



tains and the far blue ocean. In sunlight the 
glacier glistens like frosty crystals; in cloudy 
weather the summit is shrouded with fog wraiths. 
The Indians called this "the mountain that was 
God." 

Lumber, gold, silver, and copper are important 




Salmon Fishing 



products of Washington and Oregon. Fish is 
shipped from the coast region; and wheat, oats, 
barley, and apples are agricultural products. Cali- 
fornia has a very great variety of minerals, fruits, 



220 Little Journeys in America 

grains, and fish. Gold, petroleum, quicksilver, 
sugar beets, and citrous fruits are products in 
which she has been the leading state. Other 
important crops are nuts, hay, wheat, oats, 
lumber, rye, and cotton. Among the many fruits 
raised are raisin-grapes, oranges, lemons, prunes, 
olives, figs, pineapples, pears, grapes, dates, 
citrons, cherries, and berries. The deer, bear, wolf 
and big-horn are native wild animals of the Pacific 
Coast states. There are many varieties of birds. 



SAN FRANCISCO, THE CITY OF THE 
GOLDEN GATE 

A STIFF, fresh breeze ruffles the blue bay 
^^^ withm the Golden Gate; a white sail, flecks 
the far horizon; a gray gunboat basks beyond a» 
pier; and a silver air-plane circles in the shim- 
mering sky. Before you lies the city of San 
Francisco on its yellow hills and sand dunes, 
spreading its parks and streets and buildings 
beside the peaceful harbor. * 

Across the bay is Oakland, with Goat Island 
midway between the two cities. At the foot of 
Market Street you find ferries leading to all parts 
of the inland coast. Here you may take a car to 
Golden Gate Park by way of Market Street, which 
will give you a good view of the city; or you may 
prefer one of the numerous sight-seeing auto- 
mobiles. 

You will notice cable cars climbing steep slopes 
like giant bugs on brown walls. There are many 
towering hills and cliffs and frequent grassy 
squares. On or near Market Street in the down- 
town section are shops, hotels, and theaters. It 
seems very sunny and open with no crowding 
skyscrapers and with many wide walks and streets. 
At the famous old Market Street corner, which 

221 



222 Little Journeys in America 

used to be called Cape Horn because it was so 
windy, you find the "Lotta Fountain" — a gift to 
the city by Lotta Crabtree, who was delighted 
with San Francisco's appreciation of her talent as 
an actress. 

On Portsmouth Square is a monument to 
Stevenson, another artist whom San Francisco 
loved and understood. A-top of the smooth 
shaft is a ship, its sails spread full to the wind, 
but it never reaches port. It just careens grace- 
fully there in the ancient plaza where the gracious 
story-teller used to chat with sailors and brown- 
skinned vagabonds from the far corners of the 
world, who answered the call of his comradely 
soul. The monument seems a fitting memorial 
to the romantic sea-lover with his spirit of high 
adventuring. 

On the stone you may read the quotation from 
Stevenson's creed, beginning "To be honest, to 
be kind, to earn a little, to spend a little less — ." 
It is a wholesome lesson from one wanderer to 
another who stops to sun himself in old Ports- 
mouth Square. 

SOME FAMOUS BUILDINGS 

At the top of Nob Hill is the brown stone home 
of the Pacific Union Club. This is as handsome a 
building of its sort as one may find anjswhere, and 



San Francisco, Golden Gate City 223 

it has a superb view over the roofs and out to sea. 
The Bohemian Club is a famous organization 
made up of writers and other artists. It gives an 
annual out-door play in the redwood forests up 
in the hills. At this same corner is the Art Insti- 
tute with a notable collection of California paint- 
ings. 

Near by is the club house of the Native Sons of 
the Golden West, with its ornamental bas-reliefs 
of burnt clay in which you may read a brief story 
of California's romantic history. Beyond Market 
to Dolores is the old Mission settlement which 
took its name from a green-fringed stream that 
the priests called "Our Lady of the Weeping 
Willows." The stout adobe chapel which was 
built in 1782 withstood the earthquake with 
hardly a sign, but a modern church crumbled in 
ruins beside it. 

Where once was a waste of sand dunes you will 
find the lovely Park of the Golden Gate. Here 
are pools, waterfalls, trees, vines, flowers, Grecian 
portals. Stow Lake spreads its glistening blue 
at the foot of Strawberry Hill, and Huntington 
Falls pour a lazy cascade over the curving shores. 
You may drink tea in a fascinating Japanese 
Garden or visit bird house, conservatory, music 
temple, or zoo, as you choose. 

Interesting Indian relics and Spanish, Mexican, 



224 Little eloiirneys in America 

Russian, and American heirlooms will attract you 
in the National History Museum. Along the 
drive are many memorial statues, and flowers 
flame in masses of pink and scarlet and yellow and 
blue. And beyond are the cliffs, the broad Pacific 
and the beating surf. 

THE PEOPLE YOU MEET 

You meet many nationalities in the streets of 
San Francisco or among her varied shops and 
along her busy wharves. Indians, Portuguese, 
Italians, Mexicans, Japanese and Chinese, French 
Canadians, Alaskan gold-diggers: they all seem at 
home and a picturesque part of the great colorful 
city. 

You may have seen other China towns, but the 
San Francisco specimen will interest you. It is 
not the squalid scene of the old town either. The 
cleansing torch of the fire swept away much of its 
crime and vileness. But the new Chinatown is 
still a little patch of the Orient. Women and 
girls patter about in loose coats and trousers, 
sometimes of gorgeous silk. Wise, sober faces 
meet you at flower stalls and curio shops. Long, 
brown fingers sort lily bulbs and poppy baskets 
or fashion jade settings and gold embroideries. 
At night the swinging lanterns glow above your 
head and queer, slant-eyed folk glide into mys- 
terious, pagody -towered houses. 



San Francisco, Golden Gate City 225 

There are New Year's celebrations on February 
first, with firecrackers, incense, lanterns, feasts, 
and midnight processions. Worshippers toss their 
bamboo slips before the joss-house altars, and 
accept without question the fate which the gods 
decree. You may glimpse a funeral procession 
with prayers flying about in the shape of imita- 
tion paper money. The body lies high on its 
bier, followed by the priests and the white-robed 
mourners. 

You have a wide choice of Chinese restaurants 
where you may sip tea and nibble cakes, if you 
don't fancy something hot and spicy, with chop- 
sticks. Here are more wise faces, also carved 
teak screens and embroidered tunics and a highly 
poetic name such as "Balcony of Bliss," or 
"Garden of Almonds." But you will find many 
other public dining-rooms with less atmosphere 
and better food. San Francisco is a city of excel- 
lent hotels and restaurants. She is said to surpass 
New York in the number of first-class eating 
places in proportion to the population. 

EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE 

On an April morning in 1906, the scourge of 
fire swept over the city which was awakened with 
its stoutest walls tottering like childrens' blocks; 
and a clever newspaper writer began his message 



226 Little Journeys in America 

to an eastern paper with this sentence, *'And 
San Francisco was." The sentence was considered 
a masterly bit of journalism. But San Francisco 
has long since refuted its cleverness and has risen 
like magic from her pathetic ruins. 

Fires had swept the city in the early days and 
had led to the placing of the phoenix upon the 
municipal seal. After the earthquake the city 
proved equal to the spirit of her emblem and like 
the feathered marvel of Arabia, emerged trium- 
phant from a bed of flames. Only a few old scars 
remain to remind you of her terrible disaster. 
And you will find San Francisco a most modern 
city and feel the pulse of vigorous youth in her 
midst. 

Her people are fond of pleasure. They know 
the call of the wild; and they love the sea, the 
mountains, and the desert by which they are 
surrounded. You feel a rare sense of comradship 
in this youthful joy in the out-of-doors and the 
far, camping places. But by way of contrast 
there are gay-lighted streets, luxurious clubs and 
restaurants, shops with the costliest wares, and 
crowded theaters and concerts. Beaches are 
thronged in the summer season; and when the sea 
grows too cold for comfortable bathing, there is 
the "Giant Tub" or glass-roofed Sutro Baths 
where San Francisco takes a salt plunge. 



San Francisco, Golden Gate City 227 

You will enjoy a trip to Palo Alto, southeast 
of San Francisco, where Leland Stanford Univer- 
sity lifts its red roofs and buff walls in the midst 
of a campus of nearly 1,000 acres. Tuition is 
free to men and women who are residents of 
California. The university is the most heavily 
endowed private institution in this country and is 
a memorial to Senator Stanford's son who died in 
early manhood. 

The exquisite chapel with lavish carvings, 
sculpture, and mosaics is beautiful as ever. And 
most of the other buildings have been restored 
since the heavy damage of the earthquake in 1906. 

AROUND THE BAY 

On a clear day you will find the ride across the 
bay to Oakland a pleasant excursion; but a heavy 
fog sometimes impedes passage. Fine houses, 
shaded streets, and a lake in the heart of the city 
make Oakland a charming spot. In the Piedmont 
Park Gallery is an interesting art collection with 
many striking Russian paintings. 

Near at hand is Berkeley with its famous 
Claremont Hotel, its Country Club, and hand- 
some homes, and the splendid state university. 
Oak-shaded lawns and ivy-covered buildings give 
this new educational community something of 
the mellowness of years. Creek, lily-pond, por- 



228 Little Journeys in America 

ticoed halls, Greek theater, all have their charm 
and give to the University of California an atmos- 
phere of sensuous beauty. 

South of Oakland is the famous home of Joaquin 
Miller, where the "poet of the Sierras" lived 
twenty-five years and planted 80,000 trees. Back 
to San Francisco with the sunset flushing the 
lofty hills and painting the sparkling waters of the 
bay, you begin to sympathize with California's 
adoration of her Golden Gate. 

San Francisco markets are full of life and color. 
Here are the magnificent fruits of the vast orchards 
and gardens, in luscious heaps, with the crisp 
green of celery and lettuce and all sorts of fresh 
vegetables. Flowers are banked in glowing masses, 
wet and fragrant, gaudy and delicate. Shuffling 
chinamen walk to market with brimming baskets 
at either end of a long pole supported on the 
shoulders. Swarthy Hindoos finger strange charms 
and heavy bracelets and bright bits of silk and 
tapestry. 

There are Indian curios and Japanese shops 
and great stacks of sea food. It is said that you 
can buy 130 varieties of fish in the San Francisco 
markets. Over 5,000 workmen are employed in 
the coast and river fisheries. 

Some of the California vineyards are the 
largest and best cultivated in the world. Nowhere 



San Francisco, Golden Gate City 229 

could you find a greater variety of products, or a 
richer background of natural scenery. The shat- 
tering blow of the earthquake revealed the city's 
vigor and optimism. San Francisco touches the 
Orient as easily as she touches New York. Shut 
away from the great bulk of the West and Middle 
West by vast deserts and mountains to the east, 
she has developed a sense of world contact. Her 
railroads span the continent, and her steamships 
trail the seas. 



LOS ANGELES, A CITY OF FLOWERS 
AND SUNSHINE 

'1 7[ /"HEN snow storms and cold gray skies are 
' ^ the order of the seasons in the eastern, 
central, and northern states, it is pleasant to slip 
away to a land of flowers and sunshine and orange 
groves. Even if you like winter, you will enjoy 
the climate of Los Angeles, the beautiful 
metropolis of California to which the old Spanish 
founders gave a long and musical name meaning 
"The City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels." 

Matter-of-fact Americans soon shortened the 
title to Los Angeles; but the romantic charm of 
golden summer time, which the Spaniards loved, 
is as beguiling as ever and attracts thousands of 
tourists every year to this city surrounded by 
ocean, desert, valley, and mountains. 

The climate and other things have also attracted 
many people to go there and make their homes. 
With a population of nearly 600,000, Los Angeles 
is now the largest city on the Pacific coast. It 
increased 80.3 per cent between 1910 and 1920. 

Los Angeles is fifteen miles from the sea, but it 
receives the cool breezes which freshen its perpetual 
summer time. Palms and other luxuriant plants 
and flowering vines line its streets or shelter its 

230 



Los Angeles, a City of Flowers 231 

roofs and porches. As you enter the city from 
the hot, deserthke valley to the east, you are 
surprised at the coolness of the glowing, sunlit 
streets; and you enjoy the delightful homes and 
gardens. To the north are the Sierra Madre 
mountains, often snow-capped and always beauti- 
ful in the golden splendor of mid-day or the 
purple and rose of evening. 

WHERE DOES IT RAIN? 

Sometimes enough rain falls during the late 
spring to water many kinds of summer crops. 
But irrigation systems are quite generally provided 
around Los Angeles and as a rule are necessary 
for part of the year. From December to May 
is the rainy season, not a perpetual deluge such as 
falls in the tropics, but frequent showers and plenty 
of moisture for orchards and winter gardens. 
From May to December it almost never rains. 

One of the delightful things about Los Angeles 
is its interesting neighborhood, the seaside resorts 
which are reached by electric car lines or auto- 
mobiles. At the splendid harbor is San Pedro, 
where ships come and go from Panama, Alaska, 
Japan, Hawaii and, of course, in a lesser way from 
every other port on the great sea routes. Ship 
building is an important industry here. 

Opposite San Pedro is Long Beach, a famous 



232 Little Journeys in America 

health and pleasure resort, and a city of beautiful 
homes. Venice, Ocean Park, Huntington, and 
Redondo Beach are other popular ocean towns 
near Los Angeles. And twenty miles out at sea is 
Catalina Island whither one sails in a great glass- 
bottomed boat through which the strange and 
beautiful gardens of the sea may be plainly viewed. 




Avalou I?;iy, Catalina Island 

Queer, bulging-eyed fishes stare at you through 
this glass floor and then dart away among feathery 
groves of brilliant, waving sea plants. Grotesque 
sea urchins and perhaps a clutching octopus scurry 
about in the water under your feet. And Santa 
Catalina sits smiling in the sun like a veritable 
siren of an island in the midst of the bluest of 
waves. 



Los Angeles, a City of Flowers 233 

THE HOMES OF THE MILLIONAIRES 

Pasadena is another fascinating suburb to the 
northeast of Los Angeles. It is sometimes called 
the homes of the millionaires, and there are manj^ 
costly and elegant residences and elaborate gardens 
and drives. This is in the historic San Gabriel 
Valley with the towering mountain wall to the 
north and the quaint old Mission with its vine- 
yards and orchards to the southeast. 

Up through the glossy-leaved orange groves 
you may ascend Echo Mountain by railway and 
visit the Lowe Observatory and a very fascinating- 
inn at the top. From these interesting excursions 
you may return and enjoy a trip to Chinatown 
with its yellow-skined Orientals, who glance at you 
side-wise oiit of black, almond-shaped eyes; and 
who seem to look quite through you, somehow, 
in just one of those crooked, side glances. Children 
with old, wise-looking faces patter around in bare 
feet or sandals; wizened old men squeal and 
chatter; and women slink about wearing queer, 
black trousers and flowing, bright-colored blouses. 

The old Plaza church, which was the head- 
quarters of General Freemont when the city was 
first taken from Mexico, is a picturesque land- 
mark. There are magnificent botanical gardens 
and parks. The Museum of History, Science, and 
Art is a beautiful building in Exposition Park, 



234 Little Journeys in America 

Fossils of huge prehistoric animals, many of which 
have been found in this section, are among its 
unique collection which is one of the best in the 
Southwest. Otis Art Institute, which was formerly 
the home of Harrison Gray Otis, is a most attrac- 
tive place. 




Sunken Gardens, Los Angeles 

Just outside the city are the alligator and 
ostrich farms. Here you may ride in a cart drawn 
by one of the tall, swift-running birds; or you may 
pet a baby alligator, if you so desire. The ostriches 
are kept behind high, wire fences; and you need 
to look out a little for their huge bills. You can 
buy a freshly -laid ostrich egg that looks big enough 
for a dozen breakfasts. The ostriches are named 



Los Angeles, a City of Flowers 235 

for very famous people, such as the presidents of 
the United States and the kings (who used to be) in 
Europe. 

NUTS AND FRUITS 

There are many groves of Enghsh walnuts 
around Los Angeles, and nuts form one of the 
most valuable exports. You can go by automobile 
up into Orange county where tons and tons of the 
golden fruit are placed in great sheds until they 
can be packed for shipping. You will also notice 
many Japanese working in their gardens all about 
the country. Fruit and vegetable stands are 
kept by the women all along the roadways, and 
it is quite convenient to stop at these little shops 
for a bag of fruit or nuts as you are motoring along. 

Los Angeles has splendid stores, banks, and 
school buildings. You feel a sense of prosperity 
in her busy, sunny streets. There seems to be no 
such thing as slums, such as one finds in large 
eastern cities. Perhaps it is because of the warm, 
healthful climate that you notice so little evidence 
of extreme poverty and misery. The ragged, 
barefooted boys seem as brown and happy as the 
millionaires. 

Los Angeles is a great center for the automobile 
industry as are all California cities. Garages line 
the streets, for California probably has the best 



236 Little Journeys in America 

and most-traveled motor roads in the world. You 
may watch ship loads of all sorts of material 
being loaded at the busy port. Gold, silver, iron 




A Mountain Automobile Road 



ore, copper, lead, zinc, petroleum, fruit, live 
stock, oil, and cereals are shipped from Los 
Angeles. 



ALASKA 

"OETWEEN the green, wooded shores of Puget 
^^ Sound you sail out from Seattle, past forests 
of fir and spruce and cedar, past silvery water- 
falls and rugged mountains, through a sea of 
changing violet and pink and purple, to Alaska, 
the land of snow and ice and flowers and bubbling 
hot springs; the land of gold mines and salmon 
hordes and reindeer and dog sledges; the strange, 
far land of the midnight sun. 

There are quaint bungalows along the tree- 
fringed banks of the sound; and sometimes you 
sight an Indian camp, or an Indian canoe skimming 
the shadowy shoreline. Seattle spreads beneath 
her picturesque background. Everyone stays on 
deck to watch the scene. The ship quickens her 
pace. Above the dark green foothills, you see 
Mount Rainier, almost three miles in height, her 
glaciers gleaming like fields of diamonds against 
the sunlit sky. 

You pass little fishing towns nestled in dense 
forests. You pass wooded islands. A trout leaps 
out of the cool water; a gull wheels overhead. 
The sea widens and grows speckled with fishing 
boats and freight ships and passenger steamers 
from Alaska and Japan. The sun sets in a flame 

237 



238 Little Journeys in America 

of gorgeously colored sea and fleecy cloud banks, 
and stars shine white in the darkening sky and 
in the misty depths of the gleaming water. Huge 
fish dart away from the sides of the ship. It is 
bed-time, but you linger and watch the receding 
shores, the mountains against the sky-line, and 



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Mt. Ranier 

the gently rippling sea-path which is leading you 
into the great Northland. 

The next day you find that the shores are still 
beautiful. You are skirting rugged, tree-fringed 
coasts through waters that are pink and lilac and 
silver-gray. Beds of ice glitter on the hilltops; 
moss and ferns and delicate wild flowers crowd 
the underbush of vines and berry-bushes which 



Alaska 239 

mat the wooded slopes. The air is warm with the 
bahny breath of the Japan Current, but it is fresh 
and invigorating. 

FLOWERS AND ICEBERGS 

Moss hangs in curtains from spruce and fir and 
cedar boughs; trees sprout from moss beds on the 
sides of other trees and dangle brown roots to the 
ground. Gold and violet humming birds flash 
against the vivid green. Rivers cascade into the 
land-locked ocean, and salmon leap and turn 
summer-saults before the foaming falls. These 
strange, flashing fish are seeking to climb the 
current and reach the fresh water spawning pools 
above. In numberless masses they surge up the 
rivers or lie waving below the cascades. 

You pass Indian settlements with their grotesque 
totem poles, and you may stop at Metlakahtla, 
the Indian village of "Father" Dunkan's guiding 
care. Here are Indian stores, canneries, black- 
smith shops, and gardens. You face on northward 
with shaggy trees and kelp-spread, salmon-filled 
seas beside you. Sometimes a mass of floating, 
wind-broken timber passes your course in its drift- 
ing route to some far Pacific island. You may 
glimpse a slimy porpoise or a spouting whale. 

On shore are fields of tall grass and wild flowers, 
and just beyond a rocky inlet holds a vast crystal 



240 Little Journeys in America 



glacier creeping slowly down to sea. The ocean is 
dotted with glistening icebergs, like great floating 
palaces of crystal. The huge chunks of ice make a 
thundering noise as they crash out into the water. 
On up the coast to Skagway the scenery con- 
tinues delightful. Wild berries grow thick in the 
surrounding woodlands; and crisp, delicious vege- 
tables are cultivated 
at the scattered towns. 
The days are begin- 
ning to grow longer, 
and you may read at 
ten o'clock in the 
evening, by daylight. 
Some of the oldest 
and richest Alaskan 
gold mines are on 
these shores. There 
are also immense beds 

Inspiration Point, Alaska ^f coal and Valuable 

copper mines. 
The Indians meet the steamer at various stations 
and try to sell you baskets, beaded moccasins, 
hammered copper and silver ornaments, or carved 
trinkets of ivory. Gold combs and jewelry are also 
beautifully made and carved. Indian women 
and children have great fun gathering berries and 
roots in the woods. They take their camping 




Alaska 241 

kits and stay as long as they like. The roots are 
soaked and scraped and used for making baskets. 

If you wish a long and rather monotonous sea 
journey, you may sail around the Alaskan coast 
through the Aleutian Islands to Nome, the largest 
city on Bering Sea, and then up the Yukon to 
various interior points. But a more picturesque 
route will be overland from Skagway by railroad 
or river to Fairbanks and then down the Yukon 
to Nome. If you have thought of Alaska as a 
land of barren snow fields you have been pleasantly 
surprised in the mild, equable climate of the coast. 
Here grain, fruit, and vegetables are easily grown. 
Because of the warm Japan Current the ther- 
mometer hardly ever falls to zero on the coast, as 
far north as the Aleutian peninsula. Inland a 
hundred miles beyond the wall of mountains the 
summers are hot and the winters exceedingly 
cold. 

But Alaska has every variety of climate. It 
is a land of changing moods and striking contrasts. 
In places there are summer days six months 
long, and in other places there are nights with no 
sign of the sun for six weeks. Islands have risen 
out of the sea in bold lofty peaks, sputtering fire 
from their tops and scalding millions of fish in the 
boiling water. Then they have disappeared as 
abruptly, leaving no sign above the tranquil waves. 



242 Little Journeys in America 

Volcanic mountains flame suddenly into action 
hurling masses of steam and cinders over the 
sizzling snows. Glaciers drag off the tops of 
mountains and plough deep ravines for grim 
currents of ice. Rivers plunge down foaming 
rapids or float languidly through quiet valleys. 

DOG TEAM OR REINDEER? 

Wild grass grows over the inland prairies, great 
waving hay fields as far as you can see. Thousands 
of caribou and moose herd in the gulches. Sheep 
and goats haunt the lofty mountain crags, and 
there are several kinds of bears, including the 
polars which live among the ice floes of the Arctic 
Ocean. For a dashing sleigh ride around the 
Klondike country, you may take your choice 
between a string of dogs or a team of reindeer. 
The reindeer were once wild caribou but have 
been domesticated by the natives, and as they 
find their own feed of moss and grasses they are 
cheaper to keep than a pack of dogs. Their wide- 
cushioned feet do not sink into the snow, and 
they travel thirty or forty miles a day over un- 
broken trails. But you should not try to mix dogs 
and reindeer, as the deer run frantically whenever 
a dog team comes in sight. ?a 

The dogs are very swift, also ; and dog-racing is a 
great sport in Alaska. In the long treks through 



Alaska 243 

terrible snow storms some of these dogs have 
shown themselves real heroes. More than once 
a faithful "wheel dog" has refused to leave his 
fallen master. When a driver is overcome by the 
cold this intelligent dog will lie on the man's 
body in an effort to keep it warm, and sometimes 
he saves the man's life. He knows the danger of 
Arctic winter and starves in the cold, when he 
might go home to safety. Alone in the desolate 
waste, he crouches over his driver. The other 
dogs chew themselves free and run to camp. 
Then searchers start on the trail and are attracted 
by the lone dog's barking. 

TEAM WORK IN THE WILDERNESS 

Fierce wolf packs range across the inland plains 
and kill many deer and caribou. The moose 
herd together to protect themselves from the 
wolves. They form a circle, keeping their calves 
in the center, and with their forefeet fight the 
wolves back. A baby moose is a big-eyed, pathetic 
little animal which runs toward a hunter with 
absolute fearlessness. Prospectors say that when 
horses are turned loose in winter to shift for them- 
selves until taken up in the spring they "yard up" 
with the moose and protect their colts by this 
combination team work. 

Horses are used where trails are fairly well 



244 Little Journeys in America 

traveled, and some of them become expert climbers. 
Wiry and sure footed, they toil up the treacherous 
passes carrying packs for ambitious miners. But 
if a horse once falls off a jutting precipice and has 
to be dragged up with ropes he is likely to develop 
"nerves," and to shrink and shiver at the sight of 
climbs that he took courageously before his fatal 
slip. If you are riding a well-trained trail horse, 
it is well to let him have a free rein as he doubtless 
knows the business better than an inexperienced 
rider; he is no more anxious to tumble off a cliff 
than you are to have him. 

You may visit a fox farm in Alaska if you don't 
mind going a long way from civilization. Foxes 
are raised for their valuable skins, and of course 
one couldn't have a poultry yard in the near 
neighborhood. Some of these fox farmers go to 
town just once a year, and the rest of the time 
they live alone with their foxes. They have very 
few callers. 

In some of the large gold mines you may watch 
hydraulic mining where huge streams of water 
are used to wash out the ore instead of the more 
laborious process of pick and shovel. But the 
older method is also used. If you decide to become 
a prospector you learn to "mush" along a desolate 
trail with the temperature at seventy degrees 
below zero. You sleep in a fur-lined bag with 



Alaska 245 

flaps buckled over your head; and you make a 
camp fire, boil coffee, and heat your frozen pork 
and beans with astonishing rapidity. You eat 
anything from wild duck or juicy caribou steak 
to shoe leather soaked in oil. You learn the value 
of warm, light-weight clothing and brisk exercise. 
Much of Alaska has never been explored, so there 
is plenty of room for prospectors. 

"THE SILVER HORDE" 

Spring, with the salmon crowding up the 
streams, means a busy time at the cannery towns. 
It means, also for many ports, the first steamer 
after eight long months of being shut away from 
the world. In spring the ice-locked harbors are 
free; the grass spreads out across the meadows; 
the rivers dash down their rapids; and flowers 
bloom with magic swiftness. Up the steams come 
the flashing silver salmon, leaping and squirming 
in their landward flight. 

The fish are taken alive from traps and are sent 
through a set of whirling machinery which turns 
them out, canned and soldered, about five minutes 
from the time they are landed on the wharf. The 
output varies but is always large, and the supply 
seems inexhaustible. Natives dry salmon, and 
seal and store them for winter use. They use nets 
made of strips of leather. 



246 Little Journeys in America 

Seal fisheries of Alaska have been another great 
source of wealth. But by greedy and reckless 
slaughter the immense herds were being rapidly 
destroyed until government regulations prevented 
seal fishing for a number of years. Whale hunting 
is an exciting occupation, and it used to be very 
dangerous when the harpoons were thrown by 
hand from the deck of a small boat. Natives 
still use this method, but the modern way of white 
men is to shoot the harpoon from a machine gun 
on the deck of a ship. Whales frequently turn on 
a small craft and lash it to pieces with their huge 
tails. Whaling vessels sometimes stay out for 
two or three years, going into winter quarters in 
some lonely Arctic region where the monotony of 
the icy sea is exchanged for the monotony of 
snowy wastes under the gloom of six weeks of 
darkness. The whales are valued chiefly for their 
bone, and thousands of dollars worth are taken 
from a single animal. 

Early settlers in Alaska repeatedly heard stories 
of a tribe of white-skinned, blue-eyed Indians. 
The natives were very vague about the location 
of the tribe, and usually declared it lived a long 
way, perhaps "five snows" that is a five years' 
journey. Many people thought the story only an 
Indian myth, but finally Professor Stefansson 
discovered a race of unknown people who answered 



Alaska 247 

the description. These Indians had fair skins 
and bhie eyes and reddish hair. They are probably 
of European origin, and suggest the corresponding 
source of other Indian tribes. 

Alaska has long been a land of great adventures 
and of peculiar charm for the people who have 
once lived there. Having tasted the lure of the 
north, you want to return. You love the clean 
sweep of the vast reindeer pastures, the glistening 
glaciers, the balsam-scented forests, the soft, 
almost tropical summer time, and the gleam of the 
northern lights over fields of sparkling snow. 

The lawlessness of the old gold-hunting days is 
gone, but similar lawlessness would probably arise 
with the news of a fresh "find." In mining, the 
leading industry, there is always an element of 
uncertainty. Salmon fishing and the seal fur 
trading are also games of chance. Life itself seems 
a great, open-air gamble; the Alaskan usually 
keeps from being bored. The vast resources of the 
country have hardly been sampled, and the future 
of Alaska would seem to be a period of remarkable 
development. 

Alaska's chief products include gold, fish, 
lumber, coal, fur, copper, silver, hay, grain, and 
potatoes. All kinds of fruit and vegetables thrive 
in the moist temperate regions along the coasts. 



PORTO RICO 

Tj^OUR days' sailing from New York City brings 
■*■ you to the purple mountains and palm-fringed 
shores of Porto Rico, our picturesque West Indian 
possession. The sun gleams over the blue waters, 
and the wijid blows soft from tropic seas. As 
the steamer nears San Juan you see the gray walls 
of Morro Castle, and beyond these, the red and 
yellow roofs of the town. 

San Juan is the capital of Porto Rico and has 
been many times attacked from the sea. But 
the stout old forts have repelled invaders, again 
and again. You may see on the walls of Morro the 
scars of shells from United States gunboats, made 
when Admiral Sampson unsuccessfully bombarded 
San Juan in 1898. 

Ships crowd the rock-rimmed harbor, and the 
old city wall stretches along the shore. Behind 
these, San Juan rises, a strange mixture of ancient 
and modern, with Spanish churches and American 
office buildings, glistening, white palaces and 
iron-barred fortresses, ox-carts and motor cars. 
Beyond Morro is the grim vastness of San 
Chistobal with gloomy dungeons and gray towers, 
a fort and a prison where citizens have been pro- 

248 



Porto Eico 



249 



^cted and enemies tortured during the long 
ears of Spanish rule. 

San Juan has prospered since Uncle Sam moved 
I to Porto Rico in 1898. Sanitation and public 
•hools followed the 
:ars and stripes, 
lodern industries 
bow the crumbling 
lins. Energetic busi- 
ess men from "the 
;ates" mingle with 
rown and black and 
sllow men along the 
irrow streets. There 
^e trolley cars and 
isoline launches, a 
3w railway station, 
tneys, and depart- 
ent stores. But you 
ijoy most the old-world atmosphere which 
tigers amid these newer things. Porto Rico is 
ill picturesque; and since the United States 
troduced modern sanitation, it is one of the 
ost healthful spots in the world. 

IN OLD SPANISH STREETS 

You wander up San Justo street leading from 
le docks through the business section; and you 




Street Scene, San Jose, Porto Rico 



250 Little Journeys in America 

pass ancient Santa Ana with her sixteenth-century 
images and altar paintings. Across the street 
is the American Bank looking as modern as Fifth 
Avenue. There are quaint, shadowy patios hidden 
away from the up-to-date shops and electric 
signs. 

Turning east, you reach the shaded square of 
the Plaza Principal. Near here is the governor's 
palace, Santa Catalina with its beautiful courts, 
its stately throne room, and audience chambers. 
Beyond is the great cathedral, the burial place 
of Ponce de Leon, who founded San Juan. Beyond 
this are ancient monasteries; the Plaza Colon, 
with its statue of Columbus; and broad streets 
that lead out of the city to the splendid highways 
winding over the mountain ridge which extends 
through the center of the island. 

You may hire an automobile and journey across 
the interior to Ponce, an important port on the 
southern shore. Porto Rico has an area of about 
3,600 square miles; and there are excellent roads 
crossing it and circling its coast. You leave 
San Juan by Puerto Tierra, a suburb which took 
its name from the old land gate in the city wall. 
There are crumbling bits of wall remaining, but 
no sign of a gate. 

You cross San Antonio bridge to the mainland 
of Porto Rico, and then through palm-lined streets. 



Porto Rico 251 

past beautiful gardens to the open valleys and 
gray-green mountain slopes. You meet many 
different sorts of vehicles in the streets and on the 
country roads. 

DONKEYS AND OXEN 

There are lumbering, two-wheeled ox-carts with 
the oxen yoked at the horns, Spanish fashion. 
There are ponies and donkeys half hidden by their 
great loads of green grass, and there are motor 
cars and carriages and galloping horsemen. Bare- 
footed natives follow narrow footpaths and carry 
loaded baskets on their heads, or push wheel- 
barrows filled with fruit, cakes, and vegetables. 

Beyond the city the road winds through cocoa- 
nut groves and grassy plains up to the foothills 
and the dizzy mountain precipices at the crest 
of the central mountain ridge. There are many 
splendid views along the way. Red-roofed towns 
lie in sunny valleys ; and there are thatched huts of 
the natives, masses of gigantic bamboos and 
avenues of palms. You pass ancient Spanish 
bridges and banks of fern and orchids and rows of 
poinciana trees with flames of scarlet bloom. 

Below you are shimmering rivers, lilac foothills, 
green, sunlit pastures, and flashing waterfalls. 
About you are towering peaks and gigantic 
canyons, glowing gold and purple in sunlight and 



252 Ijittle Journeys in America 

shadow. Barranquitas is a lofty interior town 
where the air is always cool and bracing. About it 
are coffee groves and a wilderness of palms and 
tropical plants. These jungles are never sultry; 
they have a decided chill after sundown. 

"HOW BEAUTIFUL!" 

"Aibonito," meaning "How beautiful," is the 
appropriate name which the Spaniards gave 
another town near the summit of this lofty 
roadway. You climb on through groves of coffee 
and banana trees. Flowers bloom thick beside 
you, and there are masses of sturdy tree ferns. 
Aibonito Pass is 3,300 feet above sea level. 

Close to the edge of giant cliffs the road winds 
and dips, and you descend to Ponce in the midst 
of a level valley. The buildings here are typically 
Spanish. There are the usual shaded plaza, 
stately cathedral, and flowery Ratios. Balconies 
drape their vines and blossoms against stucco 
walls, and homes are embowered in gorgeous 
gardens. 

Two miles from the city are docks and ware- 
houses, from which coffee and sugar are shipped. 
From Ponce you may circle the island to the west 
and north, passing Guayanilla which has the 
largest Porto Rican sugar factories. Here General 
Miles landed in 1898, when he entered the island 



Porto Rico 253 

with United States troops. The town has a 
bloody history, having been destroyed a number of 
times by pirates and Indians. 

Farther west is San German, the picturesque 
"city of the hills," with a ^'cool, invigorating 
climate and huge barracks built for the use of 
Spanish soldiers. Near the center of the west 
coast is Mayaguez, the third city in commercial 
importance, with a population of 40,000. It 
lies in a fertile plain and has a good harbor. Behind 
it are forest-covered mountains and large coffee 
groves. It has clean streets, attractive homes, 
and interesting markets. You may enjoy its 
delightful seaside drive or buy curios, palm-leaf 
hats and exquisite drawn works at its enticing 
shops. 

AN INDIAN STORY 

Northward is Anasco, a village with a single 
historic incident. Here, says tradition, the simple- 
minded Porto Rican Indians first exploded their 
initial theory that the Spaniards were angels 
from heaven. The natives had been growing 
suspicious of the immortal character of their 
conquerers; and when they captured an unlucky 
Spaniard called Salcedo, they determined to see 
if it were not possible for him to die. * They held 
the poor man under water until he was drowned. 



254 Little Journeys in America 

and they became convinced that these white 
people were of mortal flesh like themselves. We 
can imagine the Indians lost much of their awe 
of the Spaniards after the death of Salcedo. 

You next reach Aguadilla, noted as the spot 
where Columbus first touched Porto Rico. He 
took on water for his ships from the springs along 
the beach and called the place "Ojo de Aqua," 
"The Water's Eye." 

At Arecibo, on the north coast there are immense 
sugar fields made by draining the surrounding 
swamp lands. As you return to San Juan you 
visit the little native village of Contano in its 
mangrove swamps just across from the capital. 
South of this is Bayamon, the town which Ponce 
de Leon founded at the place of his first landing 
on the island. You may gather magnificent 
grape fruit, pine apples, oranges, and bananas from 
the orchards about Bayamon. 

AN ISLAND OF CONTRASTS 

From the draining of swamps you may turn to 
the watering of the dry lands in the south. Both 
industries have been encouraged by the United 
States government. On some of the inland 
plains giant cacti, Spanish bayonets, and other 
desert vegetation appear. Irrigation is necessary 
here, and immense cane fields have been developed. 



Porto Rico 255 

Native grasses grow over most of the island, and 
these are cut and marketed green. 

Spanish is spoken very generally in Porto Rico, 
though English is the official language and is 
gaining in use through its being taught in the 
schools. But you meet many people in stores and 
offices who do not speak English, and you will 
find a knowledge of Spanish very useful if you 
stay long in Porto Rico. 

It is estimated that only about twenty per cent 
of the Porto Ricans are able to read and write. 
But the people are very loyal to the United States 
and are interested in the schools and anxious to 
have their children educated. 

Porto Rico is a land of contrasts, yet without 
the extremes of poverty one finds in a less fruitful 
spot. There are bamboo huts and glistening white 
palaces, broad plantations and tiny cane patches. 
But you can hardly imagine anyone's going 
hungry in Porto Rico. 

A little cabin among the bamboos, a garden 
that bears the year round, tropical fruits dropping 
beside the door: these and the pink and yellow 
churches, the glittering shops, the cool trade-winds, 
and bowers of fragrant bloom might easily seem 
paradise enough for an easy-going native. At 
night there is rare enchantment, with the yellow 
stars aglow in the deep, dark sky. Fountains 



256 Little Journeys in America 

play in the shadowy courts, and the air is heavy 
with the scent of orange blossoms. There is 
strange, barbaric music in the little huts, and 
laughter and songs and the call of night birds and 
the glimmer of fireflies. The waves lap softly 
against the warm white sands, and the moon 
rides calmly over the heaving sea. 

WARM PATHS OF THE OCEAN 

All about are other tropical islands, lying like 
wraiths of purple clouds against the sky. Ages 
ago, perhaps, the Caribbean was an inland sea; 
and the chain of West Indian Islands with Porto 
Rico in the middle, a mountainous coast. 

The warm Gulf Stream pours its waters out 
between Cuba and Florida ; the tides rise high 
on the inland coasts; and the wind blows balmy 
and salt from the tropic seas. Porto Rico is 
undoubtedly the most foreign part of the United 
States. Its people have the fire, the romance, 
and the langorous ease of sunny Spain. They are 
more oriental than western, and they are likely 
to be as proud of their lineage as the Anglo Saxon 
is of his. The old Spanish walls are crumbling to 
ruin, but the influence of Spanish blood will 
linger. Yet the people are responding with 
enthusiasm to the government which they 
welcomed with cheers in 1898. 



Porto Eico 257 

Porto Rico is about 100 miles long and 36 miles 
wide. With men and supplies from Santo Dom- 
ingo, Ponce de Leon made the first settlement in 
1509. After that Sir Francis Drake and other 
privateers tried unsuccessfully to capture the 
island. Dutch and English made attempts, also, 
but were driven off. Then Sampson bombarded 
San Juan with little effect, and the United States 
took possession after the peace protocol had been 
signed with Spain. 

You find few mines in Porto Rico; although 
iron, copper, gold, and other minerals are known to 
exist. The climate is rather hot along the coast, 
but cool and delightful in the interior plateaus. 
The population is something over a million, and 
about fifty thousand are negroes. There are 
some mixed races, but the large part of the popula- 
tion is of pure Spanish descent. 

Porto Rico's chief products are sugar, coffee, 
tobacco, fruits, and vegetables. Vegetables of 
almost all kinds are raised and some Indian corn, 
but no wheat. Flour is a principal import. 



PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 



a byss' (bis) 

a ca' cia (a ka' sha) 

ad ven tur oils (us) 

ag ri cul' tur al 

A"gua dil'la (X"gwa de'lya) 

Xl"bo ni'a 

Al"bu quer'que (al"bu ker'ke) 

Al le ghen'y (al"e ge'ni) 

Ar'e u'ti an (al e u'shi an) 

al'ien (yen) 

An as'co (yas) 

an tiq'ui ties (an tik'wi tii) 

Ap pa lach i an 

aq'ue duct (ak'we dukt) 

ar"che o log'i cal (ke) 

ar is"to crat'ic (ik) 

ar'mo ry 

ar ti fi'cial ly (shal) 

ath let'ic 

Au'du bon 

Aus'ter litz 

bal'co ny 

Bar"ran qui'las (ki lya) 

bar bar'ic 

bar'ges 

bas"-re lief (ba"re lef) 

Bay'6 mon 

Bea'con Hill (be'kiin) 

belles 

be nign' (nin) 

be queathed' (kweth) 

Bien ville (bi an"vil') 

bois'ter ous (us) 

Bol'shi vik 



bo tan'i cal 

bou'le vard (boo'le vard) 

bow'ie (bo i) 

braes 

buc"ca neer' 

buoy'ant (boo, boi) 

Ca be'za de Va'ca 

Cal cut'ta 

Cam'bridge 

cam paign' (pan) 

cam'phor (fer) 

ca reens 

Car"ib be'an 

car'i bou (boo) 

Car'neg ie (gi) 

cas cade' 

Ca"sa Bi an'ca 

cat 'a racts (rakts) 

ca the'dral 

ce leb'ri ty (se) 

cen ten'ni al (sen) 

chan"de Hers' (shan"de leer') 

char"ac ter is'tics 

(kar"ak ter is'tiks) 
Ches'a peake (peek) 
Chip pe was (pi) 
Cle"o pa'tra 
clois'terd 
Con ta'no 
c6n"te nen'tal 
con'tour (ur) 
Cop'ley 

Cor'co ran (Kor ko) 
C6r"o na'do 



259 



260 Little Journeys in America 



cor'ri dor (kor) 

dah'lias (yas) 

dank 

daunt'less 

dec'ades 

de lec'ta ble 

Delft 

de moc'ra cy (sy) 

de scent' (sent) 

Des Moines' (de moin') 

des'o late 

De So'to 

de sp6nd'ing 

di ag'o nal 

dif'fi cult (kult) 

di min'ished 

dl no saur' (or). 

dis as'ter 

Dom'i nic (nick) 

dra mafic (ick) 

Dru'ids (droo) 

Du luth' 

dun'geon (jun) 

ed'i fice (fis) 

eer'ie 

E man'ci pa tor (si) 

em'i grant 

en vi'ron ment (run) 

ep'i thet 

e'qua ble (e kwa) 

e ques'tri an 

Ev'er glades 

ex ceed' (ek s eed) 

ex'ile (ek) 

ex'qui site (eks'kwi zit) 

fan tas'tic (tick) 
fas'ces (siz, or sez) 



Fan'euil (fan'el) 

fer'iy 

fer'tile (till) 

fiends (fends) 

fi nal'i ty 

floes (flos) 

flo til'la 

fod'der 

fo'li age 

for'eign (in) 

for'mer ly 

foun'dries (driz) 

Freer, Charles L. 

fre'quent ly (kwent) 

fres'coes (kos) 

fronds 

fron'tier' (teer) 

gal lants' 

gar'ish 

gal'le on (li tin) 

gen'tians (jen'shiins) 

Get'tys burg (tiz) 

Ghetto (get'o) 

gi gan'tic (ji gan'tik) 

Gi'la (hi'la) 

ging'ko tree 

gip'sy (jip) 

Gi rard', Steven (je rard') 

girth 

gla'cier (sher) 

gnarled (narld) 

Goe'the (gu'te) 

gra'cious (shus) 

gro tesque' (tesk) 

Guay a nil la (gwi"a ni'ya) 

Guer in, Jules (ge"ran') 

Hal'stead 
han'som 



Pronouncing Vocabulary 261 



har mo'ni ous (us) 

head'lands (hed) 

he ro'ic (ik) 

hi er o glyph'ics (glif) 

hi lar'i ty 

Holmes (homes) 

Hol'yoke' 

Hoo'sac 

hor ti ciil'tu ral (kul) 

hos'tile (til) 

Hou di'ni (ha di'ni) 

hiick'ster 

ig no min'i ous (us) 

il lifer ate 

im mor'tal 

in ac ces'si ble (ak ses') 

in ex haust'a ble (eg zost') 

in gen'ious (jen'yus) 

in sin cere' (seer) 

in vig'or at ing 

Je na (ye'na) 

Jo li et (zho"li"e') 

jus"ti'a ble 

kelp 

khed ive' (ked iv') 

L'Enfant, Major (lah"fan') 
La"Fay"ette' (la"fe"etO 
Lafitte (la"fit) 
lan'guor ous (ger us) 
lei'sure ly (le'shur) 
lib'er a tor 

L6s"Fre jo'les (ho lez) 
lux u'ri ous (luk shti ri us) 

Mad ro'na 

mag ni'fi cent (sent) 



Mall (mol) 

man 'grove 

Man hat 'ton 

Mar quette', Father 

(mar"ket') 
mas'sa ere (ker) 
May a gez (mi"a gweth') 
mec'ca 

me'sa' (ma sa) 
Met la kaht'la (kat) 
Mil an' (mil'an, or mi Ian') 
moc'ca sins (mok ka) 
mois'ture 
mon'as ter ies 
mo not'6 nous (us) 
Mon te rey' (ray) 
Mor ro Cas tie 
Muir, John 
mu'ral 

Nar"ra gan'sett 

nat'ti ral ist 

neg lec'ted (lek) 

niche (nich) 

Ni a'ga ra 

Nome 

non-sec ta'ri an (sek) 

no to'ri ous ly (us) 

nH'mer ous (us) 

6b 'e lisk 
o le an'der 
or'chid (kid) 
o ri en'tal 

pag'eant (paj'ent) 
pa go'da 
pal'i sade 
pan'el 



262 Little Journeys in America 



Pan'the on 

Pa tap'sco (sko) 

pat i o pa'ti o (a) 

ped'es tal 

Per'es, River (ez) 

philanthropy (fil an throp y) 

Phoen'ix (fe'nix) 

piers 

pig'mies 

pin on' (yon) 

pi on eer' 

pi'rate 

plac'id (plS.s) 

plu'mage 

po"co hon'tas 

Poin"ci an'a (se) 

Pon ce de Le on 

(pon"the da le on') 
P6n"char train' 
Po to 'mac (mak) 
pro'file (or, fel) 
pri va t eer' 
Puer"to Ri'co (Por"to) 
Pu'get 

ra vines (veen) 
reined (rain) 
Re vere' (Paul) 
rus'ti cate 

Sal"ce'd6 (sa) 

Sa'lem 

San Chris to'bal 

San Di e'go (de a') 

San Je ron'i mo (He rS'ni m5) 



San Jus'to Ca"pis tra'no 

(Hus) 
San Mi guil (mi-gel') 
San Sal"va dor' 
Say'brook 
Schen'ley (Shen) 
Scho'koe (Sho) 
Schuyl'kill (Skul'kil) 
seis'mo graph (sis; siz) 
Shen"an do'ah 
Shas'ta, Mount 
Si er'ras 
si en'na 
si'lo 

Sioux (Sti) 
Skag'way 
Smith so'ni an 
Sno qual mie 
Stuy've sant (stI) 
Styx (stix) 

Ta co'ma 

Ta hoe' 

tech nol'o gy (tek) 

Te De'um 

Tho reau (Tho rS'; tho'r5) 

tier (teer) 

trail 

Ty'ler (John) 

Wis"sah hick'Sn 

Yo sem'i te 
Yu'kon 



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